Not in Greece, certainly. Here the issue of the name is at such fever pitch that any backing down will look like a case of political self-destruct.
Last month the ‘name’ issue regarding what the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia should be called became the ‘double-name’ issue. At the Lisbon Summit last June the EC agreed on the demand of Greece that the newly independent country would not be known by the name ‘Macedonia’ or its derivatives.
Then the matter came up that if the people of Skopje really wanted to call themselves Macedonia, Greece couldn’t feasibly stop them. So up came the double name formula: one by which the country would call itself domestically, and the other, the name by which it would be known internationally.
This looked much too foxy to Mr Papandreou. “I don’t want to play with words,” said he. “Others may, but for me it is impossible to accept the term ‘Macedonia’ in whatever form as a name for Skopje.”
The matter might have been sidestepped had it not been for the Birmingham meeting, which was supposed to be about humanitarian problems in Yugoslavia but turned into semantic ones, too. Greece maintained that Skopje was acting hypocritically when it claimed to be facing petrol shortages and economic collapse as a mean to accelerate recognition and expedite a proposed EC amendment that would allow Skopje to use the name ‘Macedonia’ on its shipping invoices and contracts.
The Macedonia-Name issue went on the front burner about a year ago during the Foreign Ministry of Antonis Samaras who had been the extreme exponent in government of Macedonia for Greeks only. This is why he was sacked by Mr Mitsotakis last spring.
“I consider the contrivance of a double name to be double robbery,” Mr Samaras said on October 15, “Robbery both of our name and our intelligence.”
The opposition has enthusiastically agreed with him, and enjoyed the Prime Minister’s extreme discomfort. Some have even suggested that the Machiavellian Prime Minister thought up the double-name himself as a way out. But even his present Foreign Minister, Mr Papakonstantinou, admitted, “the double-name formula is clearly a meaningless concoction.”
At this point the Prime Minister became exasperated and called a press conference at which he said bluntly, “The double name formula for Skopje is the only feasible formula short of war, since we cannot dictate to Skopje the name it wishes to call itself domestically.”
He also quoted Mr Papandreou as having said the same thing years ago when he was prime minister.
On October 21 Mr Mitsotakis had a show-down with the more powerful ‘dauphins’ in his own party, with the result that the youngest of them, Antonis Samaras, resigned his seat in parliament.
“In today’s session I asked the Prime Minister to make a clear statement to the effect that Greece does not concede to the Skopjians a right to call themselves ‘Macedonia'”, said Mr Samaras to reporters. “It is we who have not the right to give our blessings to their claim that they are Macedonian… The Prime Minister refused to accept this.”
It was not always thus. Even a year ago someone could write to the newspapers saying that Skopjians were welcome to the name of Macedonia; that they considered it an honor to be thought of as Greek; that trade should be stimulated, cultural ties strengthened, even space allotted to them on good terms in the port of Thessaloniki for the benefit of all, water resources on the Vardar/Axios shared, and so forth. Such people would be probably tarred and feathered today.
Skopje, truly, has been the source of anti-Greek propaganda for years. It has put the White Tower of Thessaloniki on its bank drafts and taken the Star of Vergina and put it on its flag. The Skopje region, however, has been considered a part of Macedonia from the times of Ottoman rule and if the people there should want to call themselves Macedonia, should there be a Third Balkan War over it?
The Prime Minister has accused the opposition and extremists on the right of “national irresponsibility and raving populism.”
Only the Left seems to suggest a way out of the impasse. “A change of policy is now in order,” said a spokesman of KKE. “Emphasis should be put on the normalization of relations with Skopje rather than on the name.” He called for an inter-Balkan conference, summoned by Greece, to break the deadlock dividing the beleaguered peninsula.
Unfortunately, KKE in the past has been the instigator of an independent Macedonia, and the public is not likely to have forgotten it.
“The situation is still fluid,” said Mr Mitsotakis, “and we will have a great responsibility if we overshoot out targets and appear not to be responsible.”
He is in the best position to see that Greece must not paint itself further into a corner and then pass the blame onto others, demanding who was the painter, what kind of paint was it, where did it come from, and who picked it up?
There have been a number of similar cases of national recrimination in the past, and they all ended in tears.
