What historical reason did Greece give for refusing to recognize Macedonia's independence?

Answer 1

Macedonia was an ancient Greek kingdom in the northern Greek peninsula.

Macedonia today is a Greek province on the same land as the ancient Greek kingdom in the northern Greek peninsula.

Greece does not refuse recognition of the independence of any country resulting from the break-up of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Greece does refuse to recognize a newly founded, unrelated Slavic country on its northern border by the name of Greece's historical province, "Macedonia" which the Vardar Banovina (the name of FYROM prior to the change) was renamed by as part of the communist expansionist agenda of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to lay claim to Greece's northern territory and forge for itself a path to the Aegean Sea.

Under Article 2 of UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, "it is essential to ensure harmonious interaction among people and groups with plural, varied and dynamic cultural identities".

The citizens of the nation-state, whose capital city is Skopje, in their act of asserting their equal rights of self-determination to call themselves by the appellation of simply, Macedonian, have instantaneously, inextricably, and demonstrably diminished the equal rights of self-determination of ethnic Greek citizens of the Hellenic Republic who assert their equal rights to self-determination and to call themselves by the appellation of simply, Macedonian which is their historical millennia old cultural identity.

The call for the Former Yugoslav Republic to find a name for itself, that does not imply a territorial claim on its southern neighbour has been echoed by the United Nations and all international organizations have followed suit.

Greece objects to the use of the simple name of "Macedonia" because it not only implies a territorial expansionist agenda on its northern province (as shown by the Former Yugoslav Republic's 'antiquization' programme, misappropriation of Greek heroes and a myriad of government officials photographed in front of expansionist maps that include northern Greece) but also because the use of Greece's historical name violates the UNESCO terms of cultural diversity and diminishes Greece's equal right to identify simply by its historical name Macedonia and the equal right of Greeks to identify simply as Macedonians.