Background report of the northern Greek borders

[Flipper]

This is from the free university of Berlin, an independent source which you may find interesting. Since the Germans were allied with Bulgaria they've kept many historical records. Have a look at:

Background report of the northern Greek borders (PDF) (http://www.exlinea.org/pub/Background_final.pdf)

Here's a teaser from the document


The 1st Balkan War in 1912 played a decisive role for the allied Balkan countries that liberated almost every European territory from Turkish domination. The disagreement however concerning the distribution of territories lead to the 2nd Balkan War in 1913 between Serbia-
Greece-Montenegro and Bulgaria. The defeat of Bulgaria ended with the Bucharest Treaty where the relevant distribution of land was settled. In 1912 the ‘Great Powers” decided on the creation of the Albanian State. The outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) dragged the cross border area and the Balkans in general into turmoil. Bulgaria allies with Germany and occupies the part of eastern Macedonia. The Neuilly Treaty in 1919 sees the exchange of population between Greece and Bulgaria. The first Balkan Convention in Athens is a notable initial attempt of inter Balkan collaboration that led to the Balkan Pact which was signed in 1934. Mussolini invades Albania in 1939 and in 1941 with the outbreak of World War II, Bulgaria joins the Axis Powers while the cross border zone continue to be the object of competition. Following the end of the World War II the “Federal Republic of Macedonia” was a part of the six federal democracies which constitute Yugoslavia. The Amicable Agreement in Varna in 1947 between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia sees the establishment of the “Balkan Federation” in which the “Federal Republic of Macedonia” would be a part of and would also include the “Aegean Macedonia”, the “Pirin Macedonia” and the “Bardar Macedonia”. However, the plan fell through after the severance of the Tito-Stalin relations. In 1948 Bulgaria does not adopt the view that a “Macedonian Nation” exists and therefore due to this reason there can be no “Macedonian Minority”.

[admin]

Great article! can you post the author name and the source :)

[Flipper]

It is a project called exlinea done by the Free University of Berlin.The cordination is done by Dr. James W. Scott.

Read below what they do:


Over the last decade the conventional cartography of nation-states delineated by hard and fast boundaries has begun to be challenged by the emergence of new cross border cooperative alliances. No longer the exclusive domains of national governments, international relations are being defined by regions, cities, interest groups and enterprise networks.

Assuming that the development of cross-border interaction mechanisms is a vital element in dealing with the political and socio-economic challenges of EU expansion, EXLINEA examines opportunities and constraints to local/regional cross-border co-operation in CEE. State borders are viewed as socio-political constructs whilst cross-border region building is conceptualised as a process of formal and informal integration conditioned by overlying policies, co-operation practices and perceptions of the significance of cross-border interaction.
The core focus of this research is to study cross-border interaction processes and patterns as a result of policies at various levels and established forms of co-operation practices, conditioned by the perceptions of various public and private actors.

The work will be carried out over a 36-month period. After a short preparatory phase work will centre around three successive empirical steps, the synthesis of data and dissemination activities. Project management (incl. the production of a final report) will be treated as separate work package.

Milestones consist of workshops (discussion of cumulative results with various actor groups, experts, officials and practitioners), interim and final reports. Expected results include: uncovering relations between EU and national policies and local-level co-operation practices; enhancing conceptual clarity and comparability through analysing political, socio-economic and discursive dimensions of cross-border interaction, and generating hypotheses to facilitate future research

[pankration]

I hope that using non-Greek sources to prove our point hammers it home for the Skopjians who claim that we manipulate evidence.