"Greater Greece" hangs on many public walls

Athens reacts on the map of "Greater Macedonia", but is silent about the Historic Map of Greece, printed by the Greek Parliament, which includes parts of today's Albania and Turkey, and also prints several toponyms in today's Macedonia in Greek language.

The map is taken from a Greek irredentist site (enotitanpride.tripod.com/ellada), which claims all these territories as "Greek". The site, among other things, calls for war to "reunite" Macedonian southern provinces with Greece.

While the Greek government keeps talking about the "expansionist propaganda of Macedonia against Greece", no one bothers to discuss the way Greece threats territorial matters. The map, printed in 2000 by the Parliament, has a legend saying "The Unification of Greece".

Map of Greater Greece, issued by the Greek Parliament in year 2000

In purple are marked the territories which “united” with the Greek state in 1920 and below, the Treaty of Sevres is mentioned, which partly satisfied the needs of the Greek “Great Idea” (Megali Idea). The very mention of “unification” serves to highlight the “unity” and “indivisibility” of Greek lands, which include the marked purple territories.

Of course the nationalists and crypto-nationalists in Greece can justify themselves by claiming that the map is not expansionist, but rather represents the real situation on the ground following the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. Well, a similar argumentation can be used by every Macedonian nationalist claiming the same for the Treaty of Bucharest of 1913 in which the well-known map with the division of the Macedonian lands between three states is not expansionist propaganda but rather represents the realistic situation at the actual time. So in actual fact, what is the difference between the title “Historical Map of Greece” (1920) from the title “Historical Map of Macedonia” (1913). Or what is the difference between a title that reads “The Division of Macedonia” and one that states “The Unification of Greece”?

The ‘wonder’ of the above mentioned map is that it ‘decorates’ a large number of administrative buildings in Greece such as municipal offices, police stations and even Greek embassies abroad, which indirectly serves as propaganda in the service of the policy of “Megali Idea” (the doctrine of a greater Greece from the last century which advocates the idea of a Greece spread over two continents and surrounded by three seas). Similarly, it propagates the Greek character of Cyprus as well as the Greek character of southern Albania. The map even goes as far as to use the Greek terms “Monastirio” and “Stromnitsa” for Bitola and Strumica respectively which are in the territory of the Republic of Macedonia, while all toponyms in southern Albania (which by the way is called “Northern Epirus”) are exclusively in Greek.

When such a map is issued on the initiative of the Greek Parliament and under the supervision of the Geographic Military Service and which to this day is continually being distributed by the highest organ of the state, that is the Parliament, how then will Greek diplomacy convince interlocutors from all places that “it is concerned with the stability of the region” and that “the expansionist ideologies of its neighbours (referring here to the Republic of Macedonia) are not contributing towards achieving this”?

Taken generally, when we speak of the Macedonian question in recent times, Greek diplomacy has lingered around the arguments surrounding the “cultural inheritance of Greece”, “the theft of the name ‘Macedonia’ by Skopje” and other similar unserious arguments, which by the way, are met with ironic laughs by foreign interlocutors. Today, Greek diplomacy attempts to turn the question towards the so-called “expansionism of Skopje”. History, in recent time, has been left to politicians of the likes of Karazaferis and the extremely nationalist Greek Orthodox Church whose arguments are attractive to the ears of the domestic public.

Therefore, until such time that an ideological reform in Greece takes place in relation to formation of the so-called “Greek myth” that the Greeks are the ‘chosen people’ who are also direct descendants of the Ancient Hellenes; that this link continues through the centuries and that “holy” national interests exist; until such time that the conspiracy theory on the “foreign factor” is not reformed, Greek society will continue to be in a position of ‘imprisonment’ and ‘intellectually closed-minded’ to understand reality, while Greek politics will continue to be a victim of the likes of Kofos, Mertsos, Samaras and Papathemelis, while receiving slaps in the face and paying a high diplomatic price on issues of the so-called “national interest”.

Links:

• The map of "Greater Greece" hangs on many public walls (daily newspaper "Dnevnik", in Macedonian language).
• Greek irredentism and expansionism exposed officially from the Greek Parliament (Rainbow, the political party of the Macedonians in Greece).