North Macedonia president’s website ditches country’s constitutional name and replaces it with the abbreviation “MK” or simply “Macedonia”

https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/foreign-policy/1239321/website-of-north-macedonia-president-ditches-countrys-constitutional-name/

by CollectionInformal69

33 comments

  2. I am a strong advocate for the new name and voted in favor of it, not just because I found it acceptable, but because I genuinely like it. However, I support the new president’s decision to refrain from using it both formally and informally. She and her supporting party campaigned on this stance and received 450,000 votes. The people really don’t like the new name.

    I understand that the EU was limited in their ability to facilitate North Macedonia starting negotiation. However, they strongly supported the name change yet failed to provide any substantial outcomes.

  3. The only people against this are ass-hurt Greeks. The Macedonians should be able to call their country what they want.

  4. While I’m admittedly not very well versed in (North) Macedonian politics, it was good to see this issue finally solved in a way that at least *seemed* more or less agreeable to both parties (I know the referendum on the subject didn’t reach the required turnout back in 2018, but Skopje still approved of the change afterwards).

    Could someone explain why is Siljanovska-Davkova doing that? In her inaugural address, she also referred to the country as just “Macedonia”. I seem to recall she also soured relations with Bulgaria a few days prior, speaking out against the Good Neighborhood Agreement, which is also one of the conditions for the country to enter the EU. I’m not very familiar with her career, is she a conservative? Simply trying to score some populist points? Or is the whole name thing still so inflammatory and unpopular in the country?

  5. Welp no EU for North Macedonia, have fun.

    This comes from a stern advocate of the Prespa agreement as it was finally a chance to solve a long feud that held both countries back. Like it or not, when a state signs an agreement you cannot simply backtrack.

  6. And the silliest international dispute continues apace.

  7. MK is abbreviation for “Makedonija”(Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian…), and not Macedonia(English).

  8. Why are they pretending they have anything to do with ancient Macedonia. Those people were ethnically Greek, not Slavic. It is weird and a little bit sad.

  9. The unbiased view is that everything could have been prevented if we entered the EU first than NATO because economically, this would be a deal of the century but it wasn’t and this is what we have now: 4 years of nothingness

  10. How pathetic do you have to be for your entire raison d’être to be gaslighting the world into thinking you’re the descendants of Alexander the Great.

  11. Great news for Albania, they’ll finally be able to progress without being held back for almost a decade now

  12. I honestly don’t see why anyone in North Macedonia would feel hard done by with the name.

    Firstly, it’s factually correct as most of Macedonia, including the original kingdom, lies in Greece.

    Secondly, they got to keep the adjective ‘Macedonian’ without any kind of qualifier, which is pretty rich considering that Greek speakers have called themselves Macedonians for hundreds of years, whereas the inhabitants of North Macedonia were known as Bulgarians until recently. They basically got to usurp the name of another group, who must now qualify their own name with ‘Greek Macedonian’.

  14. They’ll lose all the EU funding for development and alignment with EU legislation. That billions…

  16. Why people on this sub hate Macedonians?

    Edit: sub of trolls I forgot

  17. Well, that is one way to remove all chances from joining the EU.

    edit: Forgot N.M was part of NATO already.

  21. This conflict is nonsense. Why cant there just be 1 country Macedonia and 1 region in Greece Macedonia? This is like Mexico being upset with Costa Rica (country) over having the same name as their city in Sinaloa.

  22. tbh the prespa agreement should be scraped at this point, this is just a joke for the news to get clicks..

  23. North Macedonia will soon have bigger problems than naming and historical disputes with Greece and linguistic controversies (and more) with Bulgaria.

    *“In addition, while the older presidential site also contained versions in the Albanian (which is spoken by about a quarter of the population) and English languages, the revamped site is now only available in the country’s majority Macedonian language.”*

    Both Macedonian and Albanian languages hold an official status in the country so this will certainly cause internal tensions.

  24. If they like to identify as simply Macedonians and name their country Macedonia, why not? I don’t see what the big problem is? If they determined that that’s what they want.

  25. Then say bye to the EU. It’s funny that their country was the only Yugoslav republic that gained independence without a war, but still they are the poorest country in the region and they have far more important problems to fix. As long as it is named “Macedonia” and the country still thinks that somehow they are the continuation of Ancient Macedonia, Greece will veto every attempt to join the EU. Greeks didn’t really like the name change to North Macedonia either, but it was a compromise made to fix both countries’ relations.

  26. Of course, any nation can identify as it wishes, but can it appropriate a multi-cultural term like “Macedonia” exclusively for itself? It is as if at some era in recent history, a certain nation called itself “Europe” and its members “Europeans” appeared in the middle of our continent.. Isn’t that controversial for other nation groups that use the exact same broader term as a regional identity but feel that suddenly are deprived of it?

  28. This is really an act of brazen deception toward Greece and NATO. Hard to take them seriously after this.

  29. The fight over the name is kind of dumb, but (North) Macedonians claiming to be the descendants of the ancient Macedonians is crazy and delusional: they were Greek in every single aspect of their lives, Slavic peoples weren’t even remotely close to the Mediterranean at the time, let alone to the Kingdom of ancient Macedonia.

  30. I just don’t get the north Macedonian perspective on this whole issue. Macedonia can not be used as anything other than a geographical indicator of where the country is. The people that live in the northern parts of Macedonia aren’t Macedonians, Macedonians are greek like people, that is historical fact. North Macedonians are Slavs and not really Greek in the slightest. It’s just kinda pathetic to steal someone else’s identity and history.

  32. If they think they can out-stubborn us with petty tricks, they’re in for a decacdes-long wait.

    We hold grudges for a very long time and trickery on technicalities is one of our national sports. You cannot win this game.

    They need to cut the nationalist crap and start using their real name to which they agreed. They’re actually helping Greek nationalists with this behaviour.

    Make amends with Bulgaria too by the way.

    Stop trying to build a national identity by using the history of other countries.

  33. Another Putin puppet in NATO – can we dissolve NATO and create a new organisation?

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