Aegean Macedonia

"Aegean Macedonia" (Bulgarian: Егейска Македония, Macedonian: Егејска Македонија) is a term that refers to the Greek region of Macedonia in Northern Greece. It is currently mainly used in the Republic of Macedonia, including in the irredentist context of a United Macedonia. The term is also used in Bulgaria as the more common synonym for Greek Macedonia, without the connotations it has in the Republic of Macedonia. The term has no circulation in Greece, since Aegean usually refers to the Greek islands or to strictly Greek coastal areas with direct access to the Aegean Sea. Although Greek Macedonia does indeed have its coastline along the northern Aegean, the province is more than anything else dominated by its high mountain ranges and broad, grassy plains, rather than by its coastline (with the exception of the Chalkidiki peninsula, which of course is a very popular holiday destination in eastern Macedonia noted for its beaches).

The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1910s, most of its early appearances were in the writings of Bulgarian authors. Since the mid-1940s the term has appeared on maps circulated first in Yugoslavia and especially after 1991 in the independent Republic of Macedonia, which envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia", and is regarded in Greece as a non-recognition of current European borders, including the legitimacy of Greek sovereignty over the area.

During the Greek Civil War, the Greek government referred to the usage as a "new term" only recently introduced by Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia, implying that it considered it part of the Yugoslav campaign of laying claim to Greek Macedonia.

Tito's war-time representative to Yugoslav Macedonia, Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, is credited with promoting the usage of the regional names of the Macedonian region for irredentist purposes. In 1946, the Belgrade newspaper Borba (August 26, 1946) published an article under the title "Aegean Macedonia", it was also published in Skopje’s Nova Makedonija with a map of Yugoslav territorial claims against Greece. A month later, on September 22, the Premier of the People's Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Vlahov (speech in Nova Makedonija, on September 26, 1946), announced, "We openly declare that Greece has no rights whatsoever over Aegean Macedonia...". Vlahov then went on to publish, "The Problems of Aegean Macedonia", Belgrade, June 1947.

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