It is quiz night and the quizmaster asks the million-euro-question: “What is ‘fyrom’? a) A synthetic material? b) An old English expression for ‘farther away’? c) A country?
The correct answer would have been: it is a country. Macedonia, born as a nation from the rubble of former Yugoslavia in 1991, now a member state of the United Nations, of the OSCE, the World Bank, the WTO, the IMF and the European Council, cannot call itself Macedonia. In the international community of states it figures as FYROM, or ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’.
This is on the insistence of Greece, which argued that the name Macedonia suggests nothing less than a perfidious territorial claim, supported by Albanians, Turks, Bulgarians and other such riffraff. Macedonia, they hautily argued, was theirs since time immemorial, since, since… yes, since Alexander the Great, not giving much thought to the fact that these Macedonians of old had, in fact, ruled large parts of today’s unfortunate FYROM and were considered terrible barbarians by the ancient Greeks.
This would be nothing but funny had Greece not continuously blocked Macedonia’s accession talks to NATO and the EU, and imposed on and off painful embargos on this young nation. They blocked, for instance, a now mothballed oil pipeline, fuel deliveries and even essential food supplies.
For the Maltese it is not easy to fathom how difficult it is for some countries to forge a national identity, still considered a necessity in a world of borders and passports. We are a small island, where everyone speaks English and Maltese. We pulled together against the Turks, the Nazis and our colonial overlords the Brits, and are today at ease trading with the world.
Not so the Greeks. Like all Balkan countries, they consisted of a multi-ethnical patchwork – Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Vlachs and countless other ethnicities. To become a ‘nation state’ demanded violence.
Gaining independence from the Ottoman ‘yoke’, Greece was artfully moulded into an artifice of German romanticism, with the Bavarian Otto as their first king. The Ottoman and Byzantine past was erased and replaced by an image of Greek antiquity, complete with Pericles, the Parthenon and wafting togas. Today’s territory was marked out in bloody battles with its Balkan neighbours and 20th century Turkey. Greece suffered Hitler, was convulsed in a terrible civil war in 1946 and tested by dim-witted military dictators until 1974.
It is not that Greece would not have been teased by its northern neighbour Macedonia. Europe’s most successful resistance leader in World War II, Josip Tito, collaborating closely with Greek communist partisans, had promised them in 1944 to extend communism – and the Socialist Republic of Macedonia – to Thessaloniki, a city first ethnically cleansed of their sizable Turkish minority and then of its Jewish citizens. The Greek Orthodox Church, still of considerable influence today, has not forgotten.
Then, Macedonia’s national-populist government (2006-2016) went into nation-finding overdrive, putting crosses on every hilltop, naming streets, airports and businesses “Alexander the Great” or “Philipp II” and erecting a giant equestrian statue of Alexander on the main city square of the capital Skopje. The great conqueror was fashioned into the number one national hero – a European version of Genghis Khan, who became the ubiquitous ‘founding father’ in today’s Mongolia.
Middle class intellectuals in Skopje had objected against this in a ‘paint ball revolution’, peppering Alexander, the ministry of culture and all new buildings erected by the nationalist government with splashes of colour – not so much out of sympathy for the touchiness of their Greek neighbours but in protest against what was perceived as debased gangster baroque while the old Ottoman mosques, caravanserais and hammams fell into disrepair, as did the quaint townhouses of Debermala district.
For the Maltese it is not easy to fathom how difficult it is for some countries to forge a national identity
“Macedonia is and will always be Greece,” thundered the Greek composer Mikis Theodarakis to a large crowd of protesters on Syntagma Square. “If our government is considering putting its signature under a deal that includes the term Macedonia, then they must ask the Greek people. It is not nationalism, it is patriotism to defend the homeland and its people.”
No, this is called populism. Cheered by the mob, this was a sad performance by the once internationally acclaimed artist, proclaimed communist and a Greek national treasure. The 93-year-old seemed to have lost it.
But so have millions of Greeks, who can buy into this. The idea that a people of two million, with an army of 8,000 regulars and 16,000 reservists, with no airplanes and only a handful of old Soviet-made helicopters, could pose a strategic or military threat to Greece is, of course, comical. It would be easier to see Greek expansionist desires towards their neighbour rather than the other way around (remember Cyprus?).
A thought not yet pondered by Macedonians, who are desperately trying to please their irate fellow Europeans. The new socialist prime minister of Macedonia, Zoran Zaev, who was elected in April 2017 during a tumultuous, violent battle between sitting parliamentarians and right-wing thugs (invited into the building by the outgoing government) wants to shake hands with Greece. He wants Greece to stop vetoing Macedonia’s place in the EU.
The Alexander airport was renamed “International Airport Skopje”, the Alexander highway to Greece will be renamed “friendship highway” and the ugly equestrian with the looks of a Walt Disney animation will be removed. The only thing the Macedonians want to keep is their name, in one way or the other. “New Macedonia” was suggested, or “Northern Macedonia”.
Yet the Greeks keep protesting in ever greater numbers, egged on by their tabloids and their popes.
Whether they are protesting against their hapless Prime Minister Alexi Tsipras, who understands that this issue needs quick fixing, or against their innocent neighbours is not clear. “Okhi” – no – has a proud tradition in Greece, for good or bad.
For Europe, accession talks with west Balkan countries are an urgency. Another wave of refugees thronging through the Balkans can be expected any time soon. This would demand functioning borders and close cooperation (neither guaranteed by Turkey nor by Greece, for that matter). Russia’s growing influence in the region has to be contained too. But for Macedonia this is, in fact, a struggle for survival.
Its sizeable Albanian population (26 per cent), irenic for the time being, fought a bloody civil war with their Slavic brethren in the noughties. They form part of the government now and hope to pull the country into Europe.
If such dreams falter, they may seek a union with Albania, which is a NATO member already and has EU-candidate status. And many Slav Macedonians will remember their Bulgarian relatives and seek citizenship and passports in Bulgaria, a proud member of the European Union.
What would remain then would be too broken to ever be a nation worthy of its name again.