Expressions
The strong sense of Macedonian identity among the Greek Macedonians has significant effects in the context of the Macedonia naming dispute. It has led to reactions to the notion of Macedonians and Macedonian language with a non-Greek qualification, as used by the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, during the times of socialist Yugoslavia, and the contemporary Republic of Macedonia. The dispute over the moral right to the use of the name Macedonia and its derivatives traces its origin to the Macedonian question in the 19th and early-20th century between Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Greek Macedonians have been objecting to these notions originally fearing territorial claims as they were noted by United States Secretary of State Edward Stettinius in 1944, under president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The dispute continued to be a reason of controversy between the three nations during the 1980s.
The dispute achieved international status after the breakup of Yugoslavia, when the concerns of the Macedonian Greeks rose to extreme manifestations. On 14 February 1992, about one million of Macedonians turned out in the streets of Thessaloniki to demonstrate their objection to the name Macedonia being a part of the name of the then newly established Republic of Macedonia using the slogan "Macedonia is Greek". Following the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia by the United States, another rally was held in Thessaloniki on 31 March 1994, while two major rallies, organized by the Macedonian Greek community in Australia, were held in Melbourne in 1992 and 1994, with around 100,000 people taking part in each of these.
Explicit self-identification as Macedonian is a typical attitude and a matter of national pride for the Greeks originating from Macedonia. Responding to issues about the Macedonia naming dispute as Prime Minister of Greece, Kostas Karamanlis – in a characteristic expression of this attitude – quoted saying in emphasis "I myself am a Macedonian, just as another 2.5 million Greeks are Macedonians" at a meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in January 2007. Both Kostas Karamanlis and his uncle, late former Prime Minister of Greece Konstantinos Karamanlis, are Macedonian ethnic Greeks with origin from Serres. As President of Greece, Konstantinos Karamanlis senior had also expressed his strong sentiments regarding the Macedonian regional identity, most notably in one emotionally charged statement made in 1992.
Read more about this topic: Greek Macedonians, Identity
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