Blog

The treacherous agreement will function as a tool to cede all the "Macedonian" characteristics we handed over to the Skopjeans, for the benefit of Bulgaria.

By Yannis C. Kouriannidis

"If necessary, I will send an Engineer Regiment to remove monuments and inscriptions that do not correspond to historical events," said Bulgarian Defense Minister Krasimir Karakachanov, just one day after the anniversary of October 11, on which Skopje residents honor their dead from the invasion of Bulgarian troops in their country in 1941, when Bulgaria was on the side of the Germans.

The hard-line nationalist politician, with probably Greek roots according to what his surname indicates (although he himself categorically denies it), made this unprecedented statement in anger because the Skopje government insists on honoring this date, even though, as Z. Zaev recently said, "the Bulgarian troops came to our country as friends"!

And if some believe that all of this refers to a distant past that is not capable of influencing current developments, they are refuted by Sofia's recent action to block Skopje's accession process to the EU, refusing to accept a "Macedonian" national identity and a "Macedonian" language for the Skopje people, which the previous SYRIZA - AN.EL government so generously gave them with the treacherous Prespa Agreement and which the current Mitsotakis government "respects and implements". We should normally be happy about this action by Bulgaria, but if we as a country had also done the right thing to defend our national interests and our historical heritage.

But how can one rejoice and why? Because we gave Bulgaria the opportunity to defend the historical truth (that is, that the Skopjeans are not Macedonians)? Or because we gave the Bulgarians the right to formulate with all due solemnity their own parahistorical version (that is, that all Skopjeans are Bulgarians)?

Anyone who does not detect behind this development the bases for a possible resurgence of Bulgarian nationalism, then probably does not seem to have a grasp of the Balkan reality. Bulgaria never stopped envisioning the ephemeral "greatness" of the Treaty of St. Stephen, when in this suburb of Constantinople the Tsarist and Ottoman empires agreed to the creation of a Bulgarian state that included, in addition to present-day Bulgaria, almost the whole of our Macedonia but also regions of Northern Epirus, Albania, Serbia and Eastern Thrace.

It is certainly a given that the largest part of the Slavic-speaking population of Skopje is of Bulgarian origin and with developed pro-Bulgarian sentiments. For this reason, it is very likely that Zaev will back down on the issue of celebrating October 11, with some compromise of the type “Macedonian ethnicity of Bulgarian origin”. Which is worse, since in this way the Prespa Agreement will function as a tool for assigning whatever “Macedonian” characteristics we handed over to the Skopjeites to the Bulgarians! But wasn’t this the purpose of the Bulgarian committee and its crimes against Macedonian Hellenism from the beginning?

The sooner we become aware that tolerance of betrayal, but also of its "respect", leaves a geopolitical void in our region, which, naturally, the scoundrels of History and advisors to our national integrity will rush to pay for, the less painful the consequences will be for our homeland.