Bulgarian Minister Touches Raw Nerve in Macedonia
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| Bulgarian Defense Minister Krasimir Karkachanov said over the weekend separate Macedonian language does not exist, causing tensions between Sofia and Skopje. Photo: EPA/Vasil Donev. |
Macedonia has signed a friendship agreement with Bulgaria and intends to honour it, Macedonia’s Foreign Ministry has said, after the Bulgarian Defence Minister, Krasimir Karakachanov, disputed the existence of the Macedonian language at the weekend.
The ministry on Monday warned of the danger of making “a similar counter-response that would create a chain of negative reactions that will separate us [Macedonia and Bulgaria] and will create hostility instead of friendship.
“We have signed a friendship agreement and friendship that we will build, and which encompasses mutual understanding, respect and care for the neighbour’s interests,” the ministry continued.
The Bulgarian Defence Minister and leader of the nationalist VMRO party told Bulgarian National Television, BNT on Monday that since the Good Neighbour Agreement was signed in August 2017, Macedonia had continued to “play tricks … falsify history and to force a Macedonian identity and language not only within Macedonia, but also on Bulgarian territory”.
On Saturday, Karakachanov protested against Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev’s words to the Macedonian parliament, in which he insisted that the historic agreement between Greece and Macedonia on Macedonia’s name had clarified the existence of a separate Macedonian language – an idea that Bulgaria has long disputed.
In its statement, VMRO threatened to call on the Bulgarian government to withdraw its support for Macedonia’s bid to join NATO and the EU.
VMRO also said it was unhappy with the work of the joint Bulgarian-Macedonian historical committee, established under the Good Neighbour agreement, and expected it to conclude that the two countries shared a joint history before 1944 and add this as an annex to the agreement.
MEP Andrey Kovatchev, from the ruling GERB party, sided with Karakachanov, writing on Facebook that “we should not allow scoffing about our ancestors’ memory.
“We want to help them [Macedonia] … This is why we urge them with the best possible intentions, don’t allow such provocations and, as you say in the Western Bulgarian dialect, ‘ohrabrete’ [empower] this [historical] committee to complete its work on the basis of authentic documents,” Kovatchev told Bulgarian TV Europa on Sunday.
The Bulgarian-Macedonian historical committee was formed as part of the effort to align history books in both countries in order not to stir any further tensions.
Historian Dragi Gjorgiev, who is part of the Macedonian team in the committee over the weekend said that he expected tough discussions once they open some historical chapters that both sides view differently.
One concerns the Ottoman-era revolutionary movements that both sides claim as part of their own history, or World War II.
Macedonian history books accuse Bulgaria, then part of the Axis forces, of having occupied Macedonia during the war.
Historically, Bulgarian nationalists laid claim to Macedonia, which remained under Ottoman rule until the Balkan wars of 1912/13.
However, Bulgaria was out-manoeuvred in the wars and ended up with only a small sliver, the rest going to Serbia and Greece.
Serbia’s portion of Macedonia then became an autonom0us republic in Tito’s federal Yugoslav state after World War II – during which period the authorities strongly encouraged the development of a separate Macedonian cultural, ethnic and religious identity.
Modern Bulgaria has long abandoned any territorial claims to Macedonia, but many Bulgarian linguists still dispute or question the existence of a separate Macedonian language, calling it a dialect or variety of Bulgarian.
Read more:
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Macedonia Approves Landmark Friendship Treaty with Bulgaria
