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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> They want to be named after a geographical region which is way bigger than their borders

Ancient Athens once controlled the Aegean and its borders. Does this mean Anatolians should require Athens be re-named?

They do not want just to be named after that region. They want their country to eventually be this region. This is very clear if you ever visit. You can see everywhere maps like [1]. The red part is the "borders of their heart". In this photo, they actually kept the current borders (usually this is not the case) and you can see that they claim parts of Serbia, Bulgaria, Albania and a huge part of Greece. Also, a large part of the population shares these views, so such events is not just a mindless ultra nationalist minority.

[1] http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/03/04/02/49CB53830000...

So there are nationalists like everywhere in the world. Is that really an issue? Is this even remotely plausible. I mean Macedonia occupying parts of Greece? Doesn't that sound silly to you? Greece is NATO member which Macedonia is trying to join while being blocked by Greece. Do you think Macedonia will go to war with NATO? Come on, this problem was used by corrupted politicians on both sides as an excuse for bad governing. Oh it is hard to deal with the real issues so lets fight over irrational problems.

And no, large part of the population does not share those views. The reason is simple, those views are unrealistic and have no place in today's Europe.

Think of like a part of the US emigrating into Argentina, taking up a majority of the country, and then deciding to rename Argentina to "Inca Empire" and talk about how great their Inca ancestors were. Presumably Peru would be at least a bit miffed about it.

> Ancient Athens once controlled the Aegean and its borders. Does this mean Anatolians should require Athens be re-named?

There concerns would have been well founded, the issue was settled in 1922: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_%281919%E2%8...

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