Greece-FYROM quarrel: What do the people think?

[Billy]

Hatzivrettas
Diamantidis
Tsartsaris
Papadopoulos
Zisis
Big Sofo
Mavrokefalidis
Vassileiadis



Also see:http://forums.interbasket.net/showthread.php?t=1952

I thought Papadopoulos was a Russian originally???
Or am I completely in the wrong here?
Does anyone know how old he was when coming to Greece if he, infact, was not born and raised in Greece?

[turkishpower]

I don't get it. Does Greece want Macedonian lands to be Greek, too? WTF, Macedonians are not Greeks, they deserve their own lands. Yes, they were ruled by Greeks-Turks before, but right now there is no way Macedonia can be a Greek land.

[The Barbarian]

"The Modern Greek Propaganda"

[final countdown]

I don't get it. Does Greece want Macedonian lands to be Greek, too? WTF, Macedonians are not Greeks, they deserve their own lands. Yes, they were ruled by Greeks-Turks before, but right now there is no way Macedonia can be a Greek land.

Makedonia was never ruled by greeks.....
Makedonia (at least the ancient one) was greek from the start, founded by greeks (at least according to Herodotus "father of history", i hope u know him).
The state of FYROM was named "Makedonia" only in 1944 by Tito, so as to serve his own political interests (u can read Foreign Office 1944 for more details, i'm too bored to help u).

p.s. One small detail for all of u. Even for the FYROM's side of story founders of the Makedonian dynasty were Amyntas, Filippos and Alexander the Great.

ALL OF those names r greek.
Filippos=one who loves horses
Alexander=one that keeps man away
and Makedonia comes from makednon=tall, high at least according to Homer
(8th century BC).

p.s.1 I have no problem if the state of FYROM will be named afterall Makedonia. I would preffer though names like Northern Makedonia, SlavoMakedonia etc.

p.s.2 I also have no problem if China is called Asia.....

[EverGreen]

I thought Papadopoulos was a Russian originally???
Or am I completely in the wrong here?
Does anyone know how old he was when coming to Greece if he, infact, was not born and raised in Greece?

Lazos Papadopoulos grew up in Russia since his grandfather has emigrated there as a communist after the 2nd world war. He and his family (as many others) returned to Greece in the 1990's when the government wanted to put right, the wrongs of Greece's policies. There were actually about 400,000 communist Greeks that emigrated to communist countries between 1947 and 1967 because they were the "black sheep" of Greek society and were regarded as second and third class citizens because of their political beleife and many had been persecuted and sent into exile or self -exile.

Some other examples are from football, Dimitris Papadopoulos who plays for PAO who grew up in Uzbekistan, Gerasimos Tzakis who played for the Romanian NT in basketball.

[c_fish]

I don't get it. Does Greece want Macedonian lands to be Greek, too? WTF, Macedonians are not Greeks, they deserve their own lands. Yes, they were ruled by Greeks-Turks before, but right now there is no way Macedonia can be a Greek land.

Where exactly in this thread you got the idea that we want to take over Fyrom?
Did any Greek here objected to the Fyrom people having a land of their own?

[rchos7]

this thread is becoming dangerous!

[Trifilli]

"The Modern Greek Propaganda"

Reading this site - which looks more like a propaganda than a scientific site - I think I have to clarify a few things regarding the scientific debate about the origin of the Makedonians and their language.
The vast majority of german historians (note that I'm not talking about historians from Greece or FYROM here) agrees that the Makedonians were a greek tribe. And the vast majority of german linguists agrees that the Makedonian language was a greek dialect. However there's no 100% security on that matter and a very small number of historians claim that the original Makedonians were a mixture of Thracians, Illyrians and Phrygians, while a minority of linguists claims that the makedonian language was no dialect but a seperate language, related to the greek one.
There's no debate and no doubt however about the fact that the Makedonians were no slavic people, that they did not speak a slavic language and that the first slavic settlers in the region didn't arrive until the 6th/7th century AD.
And while Athenian demagoges like Demosthenes called the Makedonians "barbarians" in polemic speeches, this certainly is not the case for all greek states - politics even back then
And one thing is for sure: Alexander the Greek adored the greek culture, wanted to be greek and claimed to be greek - something that certainly is no coincidence as his teacher was the famous Aristoteles. And it is also no coincidence that the era of hellenism begins with Alexander (first detailed work by Johann Gustav Droysen in his "Geschichte des Hellinismus" 1836/1843, later extended and updated by many german historians). Droysen certainly goes too far when he claims that Alexander was the "saviour" of the greeks, that he was the one to complete a national unification of the greeks for the first time and this was the peak of greek history - a belief certainly influenced by his hope for a united Germany with Alexander and the Greeks as role models for future developments in Germany. However Droysen (and others who examined his work and added more objective parts on that matter) created the basis for the modern scientific debate and view on these things.

[Juan Carlos Nadal]

I don't get it. Does Greece want Macedonian lands to be Greek, too? WTF, Macedonians are not Greeks, they deserve their own lands. Yes, they were ruled by Greeks-Turks before, but right now there is no way Macedonia can be a Greek land.

I do apologise but that's pure ignorance! (No offense). Did you even read anything so far? Do you even know what the argument is about?

What land? Did anyone talk about lands? We are talking about the right to use a name! Yes FYROMians are not greeks, but they are neither Macedonians. They have nothing to do with the ancient Macedonians. Slavic people were not even in Europe at the time Ancient Macedonians existed. That's the argument. Not about greeks claiming the FYROMian lands!

And I see that you are sensitive and you want people to have their own lands. I suppose though that this applies only for selected cases of nations but not for others (see Kurds). Oh, I forgot, most of them don't really want their own land...

I do apologise about the tone of this post, but reading uninformative and random comments on a serious issue like that gets me in the head.

[Juan Carlos Nadal]

"The Modern Greek Propaganda"

Haha, i see they try to attack some greek claims (a selected group of them that are easy to attack) but they are not even trying to attempt to defend their own weaknesses. How can they be macedonians given that they are slavs and only decended in Europe in 9BC? How can they be macedonians, when their language is not eve remotely related to the language the macedonians used. What does "Macedonia" mean in their language? What does "Phillip" mean in their language? What does "Alexander" mean in their language?

[HABIBI]

I don't get it. Does Greece want Macedonian lands to be Greek, too? WTF, Macedonians are not Greeks, they deserve their own lands. Yes, they were ruled by Greeks-Turks before, but right now there is no way Macedonia can be a Greek land.

sssssssssssss guys...quite the wiseman spoke

[Levenspiel]

And I see that you are sensitive and you want people to have their own lands. I suppose though that this applies only for selected cases of nations but not for others (see Kurds). Oh, I forgot, most of them don't really want their own land...

I do apologise about the tone of this post, but reading uninformative and random comments on a serious issue like that gets me in the head.

Easy JCN, I thought no one cared about that really ignorant post of Turkishpower.

Since you talked about Kurds, I'll say a few things then.
In fact the situation has some resemblances with the FYROM-Greek conflict. The Turkish Republic do object to foundation of an independent Kurdish state in the Northern Iraq, fearing that one day they may attempt to free "their lands" in Turkey also in pursue of forming a "Great Kurdistan". Personally, I don't care if there's a Kurdish state out of our borders.

There are many Kurds living in Turkey, especially in the Eastern parts.[*] Some of them have a claim for an independent state, and they've been fighting againts Turkish army since the beginning of 1980s. Although they get much symphaty and help esp. from European countries, the fight they've been waging is really weak and it's pretty obvious they cannot get "their lands" in Turkey in a perceivable future. If you ask my opinion, they serve as a play-dough for some big countries, and unfortunately this war only help to strengthen Turkish army's influence in internal and external affairs of our nation, delaying the settlement of a full democracy.

[Juan Carlos Nadal]

Easy JCN, I thought no one cared about that really ignorant post of Turkishpower.

Since you talked about Kurds, I'll say a few things then.
In fact the situation has some resemblances with the FYROM-Greek conflict. The Turkish Republic do object to foundation of an independent Kurdish state in the Northern Iraq, fearing that one day they may attempt to free "their lands" in Turkey also in pursue of forming a "Great Kurdistan". Personally, I don't care if there's a Kurdish state out of our borders.

There are many Kurds living in Turkey, especially in the Eastern parts.[*] Some of them have a claim for an independent state, and they've been fighting againts Turkish army since the beginning of 1980s. Although they get much symphaty and help esp. from European countries, the fight they've been waging is really weak and it's pretty obvious they cannot get "their lands" in Turkey in a perceivable future. If you ask my opinion, they serve as a play-dough for some big countries, and unfortunately this war only help to strengthen Turkish army's influence in internal and external affairs of our nation, delaying the settlement of a full democracy.

Thank you sariss. I am aware of the above indeed. The reason I made referrence to the Kurds (in my haste to reply to TPs comments) was to show the double standards sometimes people have. I just wanted to see how he would compare the FYROM-Greece "fight over free lands" with one that exists within his own country. No intention to touch upon the sensitive issue of the Kurds itself.

[critter out on a walk]

a

A bit off-topic: In the wikipedia link, it is claimed that Kurds may comprise up to 30 percent of Turkey's population. One then wonders why DEHAP* and its predecessors have failed to receive more than 6 percent of the votes in previous elections.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEHAP

[Levenspiel]

A bit off-topic: In the wikipedia link, it is claimed that Kurds may comprise up to 30 percent of Turkey's population. One then wonders why DEHAP* and its predecessors have failed to receive more than 6 percent of the votes in previous elections.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEHAP

Yes, that percentage seemed really weird to me, too. It says between 14-30% . That's a very doubtful figure. Maybe, they're counting all the non-Turkish ethnicities as Kurds.

Now, let's leave the floor to the original discussion.