Macedonia and Greece live up to Balkan Stereotype

As any fan of Asterix the Gaul can confirm, national stereotypes are funny because they tend to carry a grain of truth. They give us a broad caricature of a people and their quirks, and also, crucially, how those people are perceived from the outside. Asterix is yet to travel to the Balkans, but when he does, he is sure to find the locals embroiled in inexplicable, intractable feuds based on absurd disagreements rooted in the distant past. This stereotype is often unfairly applied, but - like all stereotypes - it's sometimes roundly deserved. The Greece / Macedonia naming dispute falls squarely in the latter category.

The latest instalment in this 19-year-old tale of woe unfolded last week, when, despite pressure from various MEPs, the Greek prime minister George Papandreou and his Macedonian counterpart  Nikola Gruevski failed to reach an agreement ahead of a European Council meeting on the 17th of June. The likely result, predictably, will be another Greek veto of the motion to provide Macedonia with a date to begin EU accession talks. Some insiders claim that a mutually acceptable agreement on the name now seems more distant than ever.

Accession to the EU would be an immeasurable help to Macedonia - aside from the sorely-needed economic benefits, governing parties would be forced to comply with EU standards in dealing with the sizeable Albanian minority and the long-oppressed Roma population. It would also put an end to the maddening uncertainty over Macedonia's official legitimacy as a state, which will in turn hopefully quell some of the ultra-nationalistic sentiment that occasionally erupts. It would also be a big step forward in establishing stability in the wider Balkan region.

Greek concerns over Macedonian expansionist ambitions - over the region of Northern Greece also known as Macedonia - are an obvious red herring. Even if we put aside the fact that the tiny Macedonian army could barely make Athens flinch, there is no conceivable future where Macedonia could garner international support to invade an EU member state. Fears over irredentism are a diversionary tactic - the argument here is really about history and symbolism.

In 2003, David Cameron and I both paid a visit to Skopje to attend an England / Macedonia football match (separately, I'll hasten to add), and unlike me, he wrote a Guardian piece about it on his return. In it, he recalls being asked by unnamed Macedonians: 'What will you do to help us?'. His answer was ready: 'From now on I will call our esteemed EU partner "the former Ottoman possession of Greece (Fopog)."

Of course he won't do that, and he'll be hoping that the Greek government never read his flippant remark - however, Cameron does put his finger on something quite significant with that statement. The 'Greek pettiness' that Cameron disapprovingly notes stems from a deep insecurity over Greece's 400 year subjugation by the Ottomans, during which time Greece, like the rest of the Ottoman lands, was generally referred to in the West as 'Turkey in Europe'. When Greece won their independence in the 19th Century, there was a concerted effort to reconnect the new Greek identity with the fabled Greece of antiquity. 

This insecurity over heritage initially drove Greek opposition to Macedonia's constitutional name - now it's a bitter slog to wrestle at least some face-saving concessions from the whole mess, as the key argument was lost years ago. Whichever way it plays out, Macedonia will not only feature in the republic's name but it will be the key signifier. That's exactly what Greece wanted to avoid, but they found their position became unsustainable back in 1995 - now the argument centres on whether a compromise name like 'the republic of Northern Macedonia', if agreed, would have to be used by everyone or just by those states who are yet to recognise Macedonia's constitutional name (39% of NATO members).

For their part, Macedonia under the nationalist VMRO-DPMNE goverment have embarked on a misguided project of 'antiquisation', or the deliberate appropriation of ancient Macedonian figures and symbols as the foundation of the modern Macedonian identity. To this end, Skopje's Petrovec airport was renamed 'Alexander the Great airport' in 2006. A plan has long been mooted to build a 40 metre Alexander statue in Skopje's main public square, which would be a total disaster in both aesthetic and diplomatic terms.

Like Greece, Macedonia's frantic embrace of all things classical is driven by defensiveness over their identity. Unlike Greece, VMRO don't have the nous to realise how absurd all this looks to international observers, so they haven't thought up a fig leaf for their irrational hysteria - like the 'irredentism concerns' Athens uses. Each new Alexander statue in Skopje or Prilep sends faces into palms in Brussels, and makes a resolution to the dispute that bit more unreachable.  Realistically, Macedonia doesn't need any antiquisation. The main argument has been won, and conceding 'Northern Macedonia' is a small price to pay to move forward.

The Macedonians of antiquity were Greek in the same sense that the Caesars were Italian – sort of, but not really. Alexander was in fact Macedonian, in a sense of that word that's long dead. He has as much continuity with Papandreou and Gruevski as Cameron has with whoever built Stonehenge. Greece and Macedonia both need to break out of the Balkan stereotype - history should be left to historians, and current realities to politicians.


Originally posted on Comment is Free on 25th June 2010