Greco-Bulgarian Relations - History

History

The common heritage of both nations played a significant role in the close relations between the two countries, ever since the Medieval Ages, between Southern Slavs and Byzantine Greeks (the Byzantine Empire played a prominent role in spreading of the Orthodox Christianity to Bulgaria and the rest of the Balkans). The Byzantine Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius from the city of Thessalonica were the founders of the Cyrillic Alphabet and the first literary language of the Slavs, from which the modern Bulgarian Language evolved.

In the late 14th century - early 15th century, both Bulgaria and Greece came under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries, during which the religious ties of both nations strengthened, with the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople being declared by the Ottoman Sultan as the spiritual leader of all the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, regardless of their ethnicity.

In the earlier 20th century the relations were affected by periods of intense mutual hostility. Since Bulgaria's independence in 1908, Greece and Bulgaria took part in three major wars in opposite coalitions, the Second Balkan War, the First World War and the Second World War, plus the Cold War, and they even fought a "Stray dog war" in 1925.

After the Second World War, the relations between Greece and Bulgaria have been flourishing, and as the Greek President Konstantinos Tsatsos said during the Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov's visit to Athens in April 1976, "the old controversies have been forgotten and the hatchet buried forever". Greece became a firm supporter of Bulgaria’s EU membership and was the fifth EU member state and the first old member state to ratify the Accession Treaty. Since Bulgaria joined NATO in May 2004, Greek-Bulgarian relations have been developing on all fronts, and the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes relations between Greece and Bulgaria as "excellent".