Athens, Greece – Chants blared from the loudspeakers as a crane raised a huge Greek flag above Syntagma Square, where Greeks converged from across the country to rally against negotiations over a name dispute between Athens and Skopje.
Hundreds of buses transported demonstrators from all over the country to the “Macedonia is Greek” demonstration. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the city center, with organizers saying more than a million people would take to the streets.
“Hands off Macedonia,” they chanted.
“Macedonia belongs to Greece,” shouted others.
The protest comes two weeks after around 300,000 people gathered in the northern coastal city of Thessaloniki to express their opposition to the negotiations.
White and blue flags flew overhead and crowds of protesters wearing traditional Macedonian costumes marched in anger.
At the end of this rally, anarchist counter-protesters clashed with police and far-right demonstrators started a fire. anarchist squat in fire.
The attackers then vandalized a Holocaust monument.
Ahead of Sunday’s rally in Athens, activists conducted security patrols to protect dozens of downtown squats from possible attacks.
Nasim Lomani, an activist at the City Plaza squat, which hosts more than 350 refugees and migrants, said extra security precautions had been taken.
“All squats are ready to protect themselves in the event of a fascist attack,” he told Al Jazeera. “There are fascists coming from all over Greece, so we have to be careful.”
A decades-old conflict
The protests in Athens and Thessaloniki attracted the participation of members of the golden twilightthe neofascist party which holds 16 seats in the Hellenic Parliament.
Last month, negotiations over the decades-old name dispute between Greecewhich has a region to the north called Macedonia, and the Republic of Macedoniawere relaunched.
In 1991, when Greece’s northern neighbor declared independence after breaking away from the remnants of the war-plagued Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Athens and Skopje disagreed over the name.
Greece accuses Skopje of territorial designs and falsification of its historical heritage by co-opting figures such as Alexander the Great, who ruled the ancient kingdom of Macedonia.
Meanwhile, the Republic of Macedonia, which was admitted into the The United Nations in 1993, under the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), rejects the claim of its neighbors to hold an exclusive right to this name.
The dispute prevented Skopje from finalizing its membership of the European Union. European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since the 1990s.
In Skopje, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski oversaw a program to erect statues of Alexander the Great and name highways, buildings, sports venues and the country’s international airport after the country’s historic heroes. Greece.
Current Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has expressed his desire to rename sites and demolish monuments that have sparked outrage in Greece.
“Undeniably far-right”
At a news conference Thursday, rally organizers alleged a conspiracy against Greece’s claim to the name “Macedonia,” accusing Hungarian-American billionaire and philanthropist George Soros of spreading “propaganda.”
Nina Gatzoulis, one of the organizers and coordinator of the World Committee of Pan-Macedonian Associations, insisted that the gathering was “above political parties” and was not affiliated with any faction.
Gatzoulis accused UN negotiator Matthew Nimetz of harboring anti-Greek prejudice, alleging a false employment history at Soros-funded NGOs.
“We must love our homeland and do everything to obtain it,” she proclaimed. “Let us all be united and fight courageously. »
Seraphim Seferiades, a politics professor at Panteion University in Athens, rejected organizers’ claims that they were apolitical.
“There is no denying that it is the far right – no matter how hard they try to hide it,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to the group’s long history of political activity. far right of the organizers.
Seferiades argued that the scale of the Thessaloniki rally indicates a “real advent of nationalism, it is the first step of a real resurgence in the style of Golden Dawn”.
For their part, Golden Dawn leaders accused the Syriza-led government of national treason. On Saturday evening, party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos urged a crowd of 600 supporters to overthrow “the anti-Greek government.”
“Blood, honor, Golden Dawn,” far-right demonstrators chanted, brandishing lit torches in the air and burning Macedonian flags.
“The real enemy is in the banks and ministries”
While Greece’s far right sees opportunity in the heightened tensions, other parties, such as the right-wing New Democracy party, have taken an unclear stance on the protests.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged his supporters to avoid last month’s Thessaloniki rally, but other party officials have publicly expressed support for the protests.
Before Sunday, Mitsotakis said he respected everyone’s personal decision to attend the rally, and many New Democracy officials were expected to attend.
Elsewhere on Sunday, hundreds of anti-fascists – including anarchists, socialists and others – staged a counter-protest in the city center.
Thousands of police officers were deployed across the city and blocked streets leading to the Syntagma Square protest to prevent clashes between the two sides.
“In Greece, Turkey and Macedonia, the real enemy is in the banks and the ministries,” the anti-fascists chanted in unison.
Others burned the golden twilight flag, taunting nationalist demonstrators surrounded by heavily armed riot police.
Clashes between anti-fascists and police broke out on Sunday.
Over the weekend, flyers were posted on house doors on several streets in Exarchia, a neighborhood that serves as a stronghold for anarchists and leftists, warning of potential far-right attacks.
Petros Constantinou, national director of the anti-fascist group Keerfa, said the Greek far right has failed so far, in an apparent attempt to use anger over the name negotiations to rebuild its base. support.
“Politically, what the right is trying to do in its relations with the far right is to stop the current shift of the population to the left,” he told Al Jazeera.
“When we say that this demonstration is a hothouse for neo-Nazis, it is because of nationalism and the attempt to deny the right of the people to exist (in Macedonia) and enjoy self-determination,” added Constantinou.
“I don’t think we’re in a position to see people move back to the right. They still believe in their struggles, their strikes and their resistance.”