Bulgarian Nationalists to Macedonian PM: Your Land Is Ours!

Politics » DIPLOMACY | July 28, 2013, Sunday // 15:48
Bulgaria: Bulgarian Nationalists to Macedonian PM: Your Land Is Ours! VMRO Deputy Chairman Angel Dzhambazki. Photo by BGNES

Several dozen supporters of Bulgarian nationalist party VMRO have staged a rally in the southwestern Bulgarian town of Kyustendil, where the Prime Ministers of Bulgaria and Macedonia are holding a meeting.

The nationalists attempted to present Macedonian PM Nikola Gruevski with the Bulgarian national flag – but were stopped by police, according to local media.

The party said that it wanted to show that Macedonia was – and still is – Bulgarian.
Banners were held saying “VMRO: Macedonia is Bulgarian”, “Keep your hands away from Bulgarian history” and “Stop the terror against Bulgarians in Macedonia.”

VMRO Deputy Chairman Angel Dzhambazki demanded that the Macedonian authorities guarantee the rights of Bulgarians in the country.

Bulgarian PM Plamen Oresharski welcomed his Macedonian counterpart Nikola Gruevski in Kyustendil Sunday afternoon. The two officials discussed a number of key issues in bilateral relations, with an emphasison the so-called Friendship Treaty currently negotiated by the two countries.

Since the early Middle Ages, all the way to the first half of the 20th century, Macedonia and its Slavic population were considered part of the Bulgarian nation not just by Bulgaria but also by its neighbors and the international community. This is why from its National Liberation in 1878 till 1944 Bulgaria waged five wars attempting to unite all of the Bulgarian-populated lands in the Balkans, including Macedonia – after the San Stefano Treaty of March 1878 providing one state for almost all Bulgarian-populated regions was revised three months later by the European Great Powers in the Treaty of Berlin leaving the regions of Thrace and Macedonia out of Bulgaria.

After both World War I and World War II, however, Serbia/Yugoslavia kept control of 40% of the territory of the geographic and historical region of Macedonia, the so called Vardar Macedonia (which in 1991 became the Republic of Macedonia), Greece retained about 50% of the region – the so called Aegean Macedonia, while only 10% of the region – the so called Pirin Macedonia – remained in Bulgaria.

The foundations of the contemporary Macedonian nation were laid in 1943-44 by Yugoslavia's  communists at a special congress that also proclaimed the creation of a Macedonian language and a Macedonian alphabet designed to differentiate the dialects spoken in the region of Macedonia from the Bulgarian language and to underline the creation of a distinct Macedonian national identity.

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Tags: VMRO, Bulgaria, macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, Plamen Oresharski

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