Macedonia: What’s in a name?

The Congo Republic – population 5 million – and the Democratic Republic of Congo – population 88 million – manage to share their name quite amicably. Russia and Belarus don’t seem to mind either. Sudan and South Sudan don’t get along at all, but their quarrel was never about a mere name. Whereas Greece and Macedonia...

After 28 years of argument and anger, the two Balkan countries signed an agreement last June changing Macedonia’s name to ‘‘North Macedonia’’, because the Greeks said they couldn’t use the one-word title. Greece could and did blackball the Macedonians, saying they couldn’t join Nato and the European Union until they changed their name – and eventually the Macedonians gave in.

The Macedonians jumped through a lot of constitutional hoops to keep their end of the bargain and last week their parliament officially changed the country’s name to ‘‘North Macedonia’’.

So the Greeks got what they wanted and now it is the Greek parliament’s turn to lift its ban on ‘‘North’’ Macedonia joining Nato and the EU. But no. A small

ultra-nationalist party, whose seven seats Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras depended on for his majority in parliament, walked out of the coalition.

Tsipras has betrayed Greece, they say. No foreigners should be allowed to use the sacred Greek name of Macedonia, and what those foreigners really secretly want is to take over the whole of northern Greece. So Tsipras now has to hold a vote of confidence and if he loses it there will have to be an early election.

He may well lose, because most of the people in the main opposition party, New Democracy, are also paranoid nationalists. Or more precisely, they know that paranoid nationalism is the way to maximise the Right-wing vote.

How has this nonsense come to dominate the politics of two countries for more than two decades? When the old Communist regime in Yugoslavia lost power in 1991 and the six ‘‘republics’’ that made it up became independent countries, the southernmost one was called the Republic of Macedonia.

It came by the name honestly. From the Roman empire 2000 years ago, its territory was always part of a larger

province called Macedonia. No other country was using the name, so independent Macedonia kept it.

There was, however, a region in Greece that also used to be part of that province and also called itself Macedonia. No harm in that. The people in the Republic of Macedonia weren’t claiming that the Greek region belonged to them. But the Greeks insisted they were.

So the Republic of Macedonia only got a seat in the United Nations by agreeing to call itself the ‘‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’’ for UN purposes. And the foolishness dragged on for a generation.

But, finally, both countries ended up with grown-ups in charge at the same time: Alexis Tsipras in Greece and Zoran Zaev in Macedonia. Both are social democrats who just want to get rid of this issue that the nationalist right exploits endlessly. It hasn’t been easy, but they are almost there. These two men deserve to succeed. Maybe they will.

Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work)’