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Macedonia seeks new direction with name change

Valerie Hopkins in Skopje June 15, 2018

6-8 minutes

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It is just one word — North. But when Macedonia's prime minister told his Greek counterpart this week that he had agreed to add the adjective to his country's name, it lifted hopes of ending a Balkan conflict that has dragged on for almost three decades.

For 27 years Greece has held Macedonia in geopolitical limbo, refusing to entertain the idea of its northern neighbour joining organisations such as Nato and the EU under a name Athens said should belong only to its own northern province — the historical realm of Alexander the Great.

Now, after international mediation, a new era is at hand. But the deal, which the countries' prime ministers hope to sign at a border ceremony on Sunday, must still be ratified in both nations.

"We are resolving a two-and-a-half decades' long dispute, in order to take the country out of isolation," Zoran Zaev, the Macedonian premier, said in an address to the nation this week, announcing the country's new name.

Proponents say that settling on the Republic of North Macedonia allows Athens to protect its ancient past while assuring Skopje, and Macedonia's 2.1m people, of a viable future and opening the door to Nato and the EU. The compromise concedes Greece's primary demand — a geographic qualifier that its neighbour must use internally and externally — while confirming a unique Macedonian identity and language, a crucial demand of Skopje.

"It was a Solomon's compromise that we all needed," said Dimitri, in Skopje this week. "We have no claim to Greece's Hellenic history anyway, we are Slavs," he said, referring to a point in the deal that distinguishes his country's Slavic language and culture from the Hellenic culture of Alexander the Great and his father, Phillip II of Macedon.

But that view is far from uniform. "We do not accept any changes to Macedonia's name. It is non-negotiable," said Vladimir Kavadarkov, a retired lawyer, at a makeshift protest camp facing Macedonia's parliament in Skopje.

"Traitors!" said a pink banner left over from a protest on Wednesday by more than 1,000 opponents of the name deal.

For Mr Kavadarkov, the agreement represents the latest in a long series of capitulations to "destroy Macedonian self-confidence, dignity, sovereignty and identity". The protest camp was festooned with the flag Macedonia used for four years in the 1990s until Athens imposed a trade embargo, saying the star it depicted was a Greek symbol.

© AFP

Gjorge Ivanov, Macedonian president, has threatened to veto Mr Zaev's deal, though parliament could override his objection. Macedonia also needs to change its constitution in parliament — where Mr Zaev may struggle to secure the two-thirds required for amendments — and gain approval in a national referendum.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, also faces opposition to a deal, including a confidence vote this weekend.

When Mr Zaev came to power last year an important aim was to overcome Greece's perennial veto and open the way to join the EU, which recommended Macedonia for candidate status in 2005. His government hopes that if the EU and Nato quickly open accession talks it will help it to win a referendum on the name deals.

"While this is an opportunity for Macedonia . . . it is also an opportunity for the EU and Nato, to show that this kind of behaviour can lead to progress and development," Radmila Sekerinska, Macedonia's defence minister, told the Financial Times.

She said the deal would make Macedonia the first country in the region without a dispute with its neighbours.

Mr Zaev has taken a radically different tack to previous governments, in particular that of Nikola Gruevski, the former premier who led the country for a decade until 2016. After Greece blocked Macedonia from joining Nato under its provisional name "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", Mr Gruevski retaliated with a grandiose campaign of "antiquisation" — putting up statues and neoclassical buildings to defy Athens by staking Skopje's shared claim to ancient Macedonian history.

Ekrem Neziri: 'It is the same for us whether it is Macedonia, North Macedonia, or anything else'

Without the carrot of joining Nato and the EU, Mr Gruevski ushered in a period of cronyism and democratic backsliding that Brussels eventually labelled "state capture".

Macedonia, which narrowly avoided a civil war in 2001 after ethnic Albanian insurgents demanded greater rights, remains deeply polarised. Mr Zaev's promise to increase Albanian language rights has inflamed ethnic Macedonian nationalists. Mr Ivanov vetoed a law to increase the use of Albanian.

Nikola Poposki, a member of the opposition VMRO-DPMNE, who served as Macedonia's previous foreign minister, said rifts would widen if the name deal — which he called a "100-0" win for Greece — were adopted.

Ethnic Albanians, who make up a quarter of the population, have largely kept quiet on the name issue. "It is the same for us whether it is Macedonia, North Macedonia, or anything else, as long as we have jobs, can live our lives, and live without hate," said Ekrem Neziri, an ethnic Albanian selling rugs in Skopje's sprawling Ottoman-era bazaar.

Mr Poposki said Mr Zaev's pursuit of a name deal had deflected attention from the weak economy, which grew just 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2018.

Yet others say the previous regime's refusal to compromise held their country back for too long.

For Vladimir Kavadarkov, right, the agreement represents the latest in a long series of capitulations to destroy Macedonian dignity

"It's ridiculous that people are still worried about things from millennia ago while our kids sit here in poorly equipped schools receiving a bad education because of some name," said Dunja Ivanova, a book seller.

Ms Sekerinska said much of the deal's fate now lay in EU hands.

"As long as the EU is strict but fair, we don't mind," she said. "But if the EU is strict but unfair, it undermines not only the leverage of enlargement, it undermines to a certain extent stability in the Balkans . . . If [people] see that in spite of courageous leadership nothing changes, and the EU remains a fortress, then only nationalistic and populistic forces will gain strength."