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The Balkan Peninsula, or the Balkans, is a peninsula and a cultural area in Southeast Europe with different and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the Serbia-Bulgaria border to the Black Sea.

The Balkans are bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea on the south and southeast, and the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres (9,596 ft) in the Rila mountain range.

Name

Antiquity and early Middle Ages

From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment and the mountain has remained with his name. A reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus (Αἷμος) is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, 'mountain ridge'. A third possibility is that "Haemus" (Αἵμος) derives from the Greek word "haema" (αἵμα) meaning 'blood'. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon. Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhon's blood fell on the mountains from which they got their name.

Late Middle Ages and Ottoman period

The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, in which the Haemus mountains are referred to as Balkan. The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat. The Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, despite the fact that other Turkic tribes had already settled earlier or were passing through the Peninsula. There exists also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholary assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its general meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊, but especially it was applied to the Haemus mountain. In Turkish Balkan means "a chain of wooded mountains" (balkan), while in Bulgarian language the word balkan (балкан) means "mountain". Another possibility to its etymology is related to Persian bālk meaning "mud", and the Turkish suffix an, i.e. swampy forest. The name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary (Balkan Mountains) and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna meaning big, high, house. English traveler John Morritt introduced this term into the English literature at the end of the 18th-century, and other authors started applying the name to the wider area between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. The concept of the "Balkans" was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808. During the 1820s, "Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers... Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term."

Evolution of meaning

As time passed, the term gradually acquired political connotations far from its initial geographic meaning, arising from political changes from the late 19th-century to the creation of post–World War I Yugoslavia (initially the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). Zeune's goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, due to oscillating political circumstances.

After the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term "Balkans" again received a negative meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, even in casual usage (see Balkanization).

Southeast Europe

In part due to the historical and political connotations of the term "Balkans", especially since the military conflicts of the 1990s, the term "Southeast Europe" is becoming increasingly popular even though it literally refers to a much larger area and thus isn't as precise. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and the online newspaper Balkan Times renamed itself Southeast European Times in 2003.

Current

In the languages of the region, the peninsula is known as:

• Slavic languages:
  • Template:Lang-bg, transliterated: Balkanski poluostrov
  • Template:Lang-mk, transliterated: Balkanski Poluostrov
  • Template:Lang-sr/ Балканско полуострво
  • Template:Lang-hr
  • Template:Lang-sl
  • Template:Lang-bs
• Romance languages:
  • Template:Lang-it
  • Template:Lang-ro
• Other languages:
  • Template:Lang-sq and Siujdhesa e Ballkanit
  • Template:Lang-el, transliterated: Valkaniki chersonisos
  • Template:Lang-tr (or alternatively: Balkanlar)

Definitions and boundaries

The Balkan Peninsula

The Balkan Peninsula is surrounded by the Adriatic Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea (including the Ionian and Aegean seas) and the Marmara Sea to the south and the Black Sea to the east. Its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has a combined area of about 470,000 km (181,000 sq mi) (slightly smaller than Spain). It is more or less identical to the region known as Southeastern Europe.

As of 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria and some Dalmatian areas (like Zara, known as Zadar) that are within the general definition of the Balkan peninsula. The current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, due to a definition of the Balkans that limits its western border to the Kupa River.

Share of land area within the Balkan Peninsula by country by the Danube-Sava definition:

Entirely within the Balkans:

•  Albania: 27,390 km (>99% of total land)
•  Bulgaria : 108,400 km (>99%)
•  Bosnia and Herzegovina: 51,180 km (>99%)
•  North Macedonia: 25,430 km (>99%)
•  Montenegro: 13,440 km (>99%)

Mostly or partially within the Balkans:

•  Croatia (south mainland): 30,000 km (54%)
•  Greece (mainland): 104,470 km (80%)
•  Italy (Trieste and Monfalcone): 300 km (0.1%)
•  Romania (Dobruja 's mainland): 12,000 km (5%)
•  Serbia (south part excl. Vojvodina and North Belgrade): 55,000 km (69%)
•  Slovenia (southwest part): 10,000 km (50%)
•  Turkey (European part): 23,000 km (3%)

The Balkans

The abstract term "The Balkans", unlike the geographical borders of the Peninsula, is defined by the political borders of the states comprising it. The term is used to describe areas beyond the Balkan Peninsula, or inversely in the case of the part of Italy in the Peninsula, which is always excluded from the Balkans and as a totality is generally accepted as part of Western Europe and the Apennines.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Balkans are usually said to comprise Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia , the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, while Greece and Turkey are often included (depending on the definition), and its total area is usually given as 666,700 square km (257,400 square miles) and the population as 59,297,000 (est. 2002).

According to an earlier version of the Britannica, the Balkans comprise the territories of the states of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the European part of Turkey; it notes Turkey as a non-Balkan state and the inclusion of Slovenia and the Transylvanian part of Romania in the region as dubious.

Inclusion of Balkan states in other regions:

•  Albania (alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe, Southern Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Bosnia and Herzegovina (alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe, Southern Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Bulgaria (alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Croatia (alternatively placed in Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, Southern Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Greece (alternatively placed in Southern Europe and Southeastern Europe)
•  North Macedonia (alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe, Southern Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Montenegro (alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe, Southern Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Romania (alternatively placed in or Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe and Central Europe)
•  Serbia (alternatively placed in Southeastern Europe and Southern Europe, Central Europe or Eastern Europe)
•  Slovenia (alternatively placed in Central Europe Southern Europe, Southeastern Europe, or Eastern Europe)
•  Turkey (alternatively placed in Southwestern Asia and Southeastern Europe)

Western Balkans

The institutions of the European Union have defined the "Western Balkans" as the south-east European area that includes countries that are not members of the European Union, while others refer to the geographical aspects. The Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of "ex-Yugoslavia (minus Slovenia) and Albania". Thus, the region would include: Croatia (now an EU member), Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania. Each of these countries aims to be part of the future enlargement of the European Union and reach democracy and transmission scores but, until then, they will be strongly connected with the pre-EU waiting program CEFTA.

Nature and natural resources

Most of the area is covered by mountain ranges running from the northwest to southeast. The main ranges are the Balkan mountains, running from the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria to its border with Serbia, the Rhodope mountains in southern Bulgaria and northern Greece, the Dinaric Alps in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro, the Šar massif which spreads from Albania to Macedonia, and the Pindus range, spanning from southern Albania into central Greece and the Albanian Alps. The highest mountain of the region is Rila in Bulgaria, with Musala at 2925 m, Mount Olympus in Greece, the throne of Zeus, being second at 2917 m and Vihren in Bulgaria being the third at 2914 m. The karst field or polje is a common feature of the landscape.

On the Adriatic and Aegean coasts the climate is Mediterranean, on the Black Sea coast the climate is humid subtropical and oceanic, and inland it is humid continental. In the northern part of the peninsula and on the mountains, winters are frosty and snowy, while summers are hot and dry. In the southern part winters are milder. The humid continental climate is predominant in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Croatia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, northern Montenegro, the interior of Albania and Serbia, while the other, less common climates, the humid subtropical and oceanic climates, are seen on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and Turkey; and the Mediterranean climate is seen on the coast of Albania, the coast of Croatia, Greece, southern Montenegro and the Aegean coast of Turkey.

Over the centuries many woods have been cut down and replaced with bush. In the southern part and on the coast there is evergreen vegetation. Inland there are woods typical of Central Europe (oak and beech, and in the mountains, spruce, fir and pine). The tree line in the mountains lies at the height of 1800–2300 m. The land provides habitats for numerous endemic species, including extraordinarily abundant insects and reptiles that serve as food for a variety of birds of prey and rare vultures.

The soils are generally poor, except on the plains, where areas with natural grass, fertile soils and warm summers provide an opportunity for tillage. Elsewhere, land cultivation is mostly unsuccessful because of the mountains, hot summers and poor soils, although certain cultures such as olive and grape flourish.

Resources of energy are scarce, except in the territory of Kosovo, where considerable coal, lead, zinc, chromium and silver deposits are located. Other deposits of coal, especially in Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia, also exist. Lignite deposits are widespread in Greece. Petroleum scarce reserves exist in Greece, Serbia and Albania. Natural gas deposits are scarce. Hydropower is in wide use, from over 1,000 dams. The often relentless bora wind is also being harnessed for power generation.

Metal ores are more usual than other raw materials. Iron ore is rare, but in some countries there is a considerable amount of copper, zinc, tin, chromite, manganese, magnesite and bauxite. Some metals are exported.

The time zones are situated as follows:

• Territories in the time zone of UTC+01:00: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia
• Territories in the time zone of UTC+02:00: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey

History and geopolitical significance

Antiquity

The Balkan region was the first area in Europe to experience the arrival of farming cultures in the Neolithic era. The Balkans have been inhabited since the Paleolithic and are the route by which farming from the Middle East spread to Europe during the Neolithic (7th millennium BC). The practices of growing grain and raising livestock arrived in the Balkans from the Fertile Crescent by way of Anatolia and spread west and north into Pannonia and Central Europe. Two early culture-complexes have developed in the region, Starčevo culture and Vinča culture. The Balkans are also the location of the first advanced civilizations. Vinča culture developed a form of proto-writing before the Sumerians and Minoans, known as the Old European script, while the bulk of the symbols had been created in the period between 4500 and 4000 BC, with the ones on the Tărtăria clay tablets even dating back to around 5300 BC.

The identity of the Balkans is dominated by its geographical position; historically the area was known as a crossroads of cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire, the destination of a massive influx of pagan Bulgars and Slavs, an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.

In pre-classical and classical antiquity, this region was home to Greeks, Illyrians, Paeonians, Thracians, Dacians, and other ancient groups. The Achaemenid Persian Empire incorporated parts of the Balkans comprising Macedonia, Thrace, Bulgaria, and the Black Sea coastal region of Romania between the late 6th and the first half of the 5th-century BC into its territories. Later the Roman Empire conquered most of the region and spread Roman culture and the Latin language, but significant parts still remained under classical Greek influence. The Romans considered the Rhodope Mountains to be the northern limit of the Peninsula of Haemus and the same limit applied approximately to the border between Greek and Latin use in the region (later called the Jireček Line). The Bulgars and Slavs arrived in the 6th-century and began assimilating and displacing already-assimilated (through Romanization and Hellenization) older inhabitants of the northern and central Balkans, forming the Bulgarian Empire. During the Middle Ages, the Balkans became the stage for a series of wars between the Byzantine Roman and the Bulgarian Empires.

Early modern period

By the end of the 16th-century, the Ottoman Empire had become the controlling force in the region after expanding from Anatolia through Thrace to the Balkans. Many people in the Balkans place their greatest folk heroes in the era of either the onslaught or the retreat of the Ottoman Empire. As examples, for Greeks, Constantine XI Palaiologos and Kolokotronis; and for Serbs, Miloš Obilić and Tzar Lazar; for Montenegrins, Đurađ I Balšić and Ivan Crnojević; for Albanians, George Kastrioti Skanderbeg; for ethnic Macedonians, Nikola Karev and Goce Delčev; for Bulgarians, Vasil Levski, Georgi Sava Rakovski and Hristo Botev and for Croats, Nikola Šubić Zrinjski.

In the past several centuries, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic), the Balkans has been the least developed part of Europe. According to Suraiya Faroqhi and Donald Quataert, "The population of the Balkans, according to one estimate, fell from a high of 8 million in the late 16th-century to only 3 million by the mid-eighteenth. This estimate is in harmony with the first findings based on Ottoman documentary evidence."

Most of the Balkan nation-states emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries as they gained independence from the Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian empire (Greece in 1821, Serbia, Montenegro in 1878, Bulgaria in 1908, Albania in 1912).

Recent history

World wars

In 1912–1913 the First Balkan War broke out when the nation-states of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro united in an alliance against the Ottoman Empire. As a result of the war, almost all remaining European territories of the Ottoman Empire were captured and partitioned among the allies. Ensuing events also led to the creation of an independent Albanian state. Bulgaria insisted on its status quo territorial integrity, divided and shared by the Great Powers next to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) in other boundaries and on the pre-war Bulgarian-Serbian agreement. Provoked by the backstage deals between its former allies Serbia and Greece on allocation the spoils at the end of the First Balkan War, while it fights at the main Thracian Front, Bulgaria marks the beginning of Second Balkan War when attacked them. The Serbs and the Greeks repulse single attacks, but when the Greek army invaded Bulgaria together with an unprovoked Romanian intervention in the back, regardless of the single won battles, Bulgaria collapsed. The Ottoman Empire also used the opportunity to recapture Eastern Thrace, establishing its new western borders that still stand today.

The First World War was sparked in the Balkans in 1914 when members of Mlada Bosna, a revolutionary organization with predominately Serbian and pro-Yugoslav members, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital, Sarajevo. That caused a war between the two countries which—through the existing chains of alliances—led to the First World War. The Ottoman Empire soon joined the Central Powers becoming one of the three empires participating in that alliance. The next year Bulgaria joined the Central Powers attacking Serbia, which was successfully fighting Austro-Hungary to the north for a year. That led to Serbia's defeat and the intervention of the Entente in the Balkans which sent an expeditionary force to establish a new front, the third one of that war, which soon also became static. The participation of Greece in the war three years later, in 1918, on the part of the Entente finally altered the balance between the opponents leading to the collapse of the common German-Bulgarian front there, which caused the exit of Bulgaria from the war, and in turn the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, ending the First World War.

With the start of the Second World War all Balkan countries, with the exception of Greece, were allies of Nazi Germany, having bilateral military agreements or being part of the Axis Pact. Fascist Italy expanded the war in the Balkans by using its protectorate Albania to invade Greece. After repelling the attack, the Greeks counterattacked, invading Italy-held Albania and causing Nazi Germany's intervention in the Balkans to help its ally. Days before the German invasion a successful coup d'état in Belgrade by neutral military personnel seized power.

Although the new government reaffirmed Serbia's intentions to fulfill its obligations as member of the Axis, Germany, using its other two allied countries in the region, Bulgaria and Hungary, invaded both Greece and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia immediately disintegrated when those loyal to the Serbian King and the Croatian units mutinied. Greece resisted, but, after two months of fighting, collapsed and was occupied. The two countries were partitioned between the three Axis allies, Bulgaria, Germany and Italy, and the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Italy and Germany.

During the occupation the population suffered considerable hardship due to repression and starvation, to which the population reacted by creating a mass resistance movement. Together with the early and extremely heavy winter of that year (which caused hundreds of thousands deaths among the poorly fed population), the German invasion had disastrous effects in the timetable of the planned invasion in Russia causing a significant delay, which had major consequences during the course of the war.

Finally, at the end of 1944, the Soviets entered Romania and Bulgaria forcing the Germans out of the Balkans. They left behind a region largely ruined as a result of wartime exploitation.

Cold War

During the Cold War, most of the countries on the Balkans were governed by communist governments. Greece became the first battleground of the emerging Cold War. The Truman Doctrine was the US response to the civil war, which raged from 1944 to 1949. This civil war, unleashed by the Communist Party of Greece, backed by communist volunteers from neighboring countries (Albania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia), led to massive American assistance for the non-communist Greek government. With this backing, Greece managed to defeat the partisans and, ultimately, remained the only non-communist country in the region.

However, despite being under communist governments, Yugoslavia (1948) and Albania (1961) fell out with the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), first propped up then rejected the idea of merging with Bulgaria and instead sought closer relations with the West, later even spearheaded, together with India and Egypt the Non-Aligned Movement. Albania on the other hand gravitated toward Communist China, later adopting an isolationist position.

As the only non-communist countries, Greece and Turkey were (and still are) part of NATO composing the southeastern wing of the alliance.

Post–Cold War

In the 1990s, the transition of the regions' ex-Soviet bloc countries towards democratic free-market societies went peacefully with the exception of Yugoslavia. Wars between the former Yugoslav republics broke out after Slovenia and Croatia held free elections and their people voted for independence on their respective countries' referenda. Serbia in turn declared the dissolution of the union as unconstitutional and the Yugoslavian army unsuccessfully tried to maintain status quo. Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991, followed by the Ten-Day War in Slovenia. Till October 1991, the Army withdrew from Slovenia, and in Croatia, the Croatian War of Independence would continue until 1995. In the ensuing 10 years armed confrontation, gradually all the other Republics declared independence, with Bosnia being the most affected by the fighting. The long lasting wars resulted in a United Nations intervention and NATO ground and air forces took action against Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

From the dissolution of Yugoslavia six republics achieved international recognition as sovereign republics, but these are traditionally included in Balkans: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. In 2008, while under UN administration, Kosovo declared independence (according to the official Serbian policy, Kosovo is still an internal autonomous region). In July 2010, the International Court of Justice, ruled that the declaration of independence was legal. Most UN member states recognise Kosovo. After the end of the wars a revolution broke in Serbia and Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian communist leader (elected president between 1989 and 2000), was overthrown and handed for trial to the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against the International Humanitarian Law during the Yugoslav wars. Milošević died of a heart attack in 2006 before a verdict could have been released. Ιn 2001 an Albanian uprising in Macedonia forced the country to give local autonomy to the ethnic Albanians in the areas where they predominate.

With the dissolution of Yugoslavia an issue emerged over the name under which the former (federated) republic of Macedonia would internationally be recognized, between the new country and Greece. Being the Macedonian part of Yugoslavia (see Vardar Macedonia), the federated Republic under the Yugoslav identity had the name Republic of Macedonia on which it declared its sovereignty in 1991. Greece, having a large region (see Macedonia) also under the same name opposed to the usage of this name as an indication of a nationality. The issue is currently under negotiations after a UN initiation.

Balkan countries control the direct land routes between Western Europe and South West Asia (Asia Minor and the Middle East). Since 2000, all Balkan countries are friendly towards the EU and the USA.

Greece has been the member of the European Union since 1981 while Slovenia is a member since 2004, Bulgaria and Romania are members since 2007, and Croatia is a member since 2013. In 2005, the European Union decided to start accession negotiations with candidate countries; Turkey, and Macedonia were accepted as candidates for EU membership. In 2012, Montenegro started accession negotiations with the EU. In 2014, Albania is an official candidate for accession to the EU. In 2015, Serbia is expected to start accession negotiations with the EU.

Greece has been a member of the NATO since 1952. In March 2004, Bulgaria and Slovenia have become members of NATO. As of April 2009, Albania and Croatia are members of NATO.

All other countries have expressed a desire to join the EU and NATO at some point in the future.

Politics and economy

Currently all of the states are republics, but until World War II all except Turkey were monarchies. Most of the republics are parliamentary, excluding Romania and Bosnia which are semi-presidential. All the states have open market economies, most of which are in the upper-middle income range ($4,000 – $12,000 p.c.), however, Greece has high income economies (over $12,000 p.c.), and is also classified with very high HDI in contrast to the remaining states which are classified with high HDI. The states from the former Eastern Bloc that formerly had planned economy system and Turkey mark gradual economic growth each year, only the economy of Greece drops for 2012 and meanwhile it was expected to grow in 2013. The Gross domestic product (Purchasing power parity) per capita is highest in Slovenia and Greece (over $25,000), followed by Croatia (21,000) and then Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia ($10,000 – $15,000), Bosnia, Albania (below $10,000). The Gini coefficient, which indicates the level of difference by monetary welfare of the layers, is on the second level at the highest monetary equality in Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia, on the third level in Greece, Montenegro and Romania, on the fourth level in Macedonia, on the fifth level in Turkey, and the most unequal by Gini coefficient is Bosnia at the eighth level which is the penultimate level and one of the highest in the world. The unemployment is lowest in Romania (below 10%), followed by Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania (10 – 15%), Greece (15 – 20%), Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia (20 – 30%), Macedonia (over 30%) and Kosovo (over 40%).

• On political, social and economic criteria the divisions are as follows:
  • Territories members of the European Union: Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania and Slovenia
  • Territories currently in negotiation process for EU membership: Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey
  • Territories official candidates for EU membership: Albania and Macedonia
  • Territories with "potential candidates" status for EU membership: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo
• On border control and trade criteria the divisions are as follows:
  • Territories in the Schengen Area: Greece and Slovenia
  • Territories that are legally bound to join the Schengen Area: Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania
  • Territories in a customs union with the EU: Turkey
  • Territories members of the Central European Free Trade Agreement: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
• On currency criteria the divisions are as follows:
  • Territories members of the Eurozone: Greece and Slovenia
  • Territories using the Euro without authorization by the EU: Kosovo and Montenegro
  • Territories using the national currencies and candidates for the Eurozone: Bulgaria (lev), Croatia (hrk), Romania (leu)
  • Territories using the national currencies: Albania (lek), Bosnia and Herzegovina (convertible mark), Macedonia (denar), Serbia (dinar) and Turkey (lira).
• On military criteria the divisions are as follows:

  

  • Territories members of NATO: Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania, Slovenia and Turkey
  • Territories members of the Partnership for Peace with Individual Partnership Action Plan and Membership Action Plan for joining NATO: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro
  • Territories members of the Partnership for Peace: Serbia
• On the recent political, social and economic criteria there are two groups of countries:
  • Territories with communist or socialist past: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia
  • Territories with capitalist past: Greece and Turkey
  • During Cold War the Balkans were disputed between between the two blocks. Greece and Turkey were members of NATO, Bulgaria and Romania of the Warsaw Pact, while Yugoslavia was proponent of a third way and was a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina kept an observer status within the organisation.

Regional organizations

See also the Black Sea Regional organizations

Statistics

	Albania	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Bulgaria	Croatia	Greece	Macedonia	Montenegro	Romania	Serbia	Slovenia	Turkey
Flag
Coat of arms
Capital	Tirana	Sarajevo	Sofia	Zagreb	Athens	Skopje	Podgorica	Bucharest	Belgrade	Ljubljana	Ankara
Independence	November 28, 1912	March 3, 1992	October 5, 1908	March 3, 1992	March 25, 1821	November 17, 1991	June 3, 2006	May 9, 1878	June 8, 2006	December 13, 1991	October 29, 1923
Current President	Bujar Nishani	Bakir Izetbegović	Rosen Plevneliev	Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović	Prokopis Pavlopoulos	Gjorge Ivanov	Filip Vujanović	Klaus Iohannis	Tomislav Nikolić	Borut Pahor	Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Population (2015)	2,886,026	3,791,622	7,153,784	4,225,316	10,955,000	2,069,172	620,000	19,861,400	7,114,393	2,064,188	79,463,663
Area	28,748 km²	51,209 km²	110,879 km²	56,594 km²	131,990 km²	25,713 km²	13,812 km²	238,391 km²	77,474 km²	20,273 km²	783,356 km²
Density	98/km²	75/km²	64/km²	76/km²	84/km²	80/km²	45/km²	84/km²	92/km²	102/km²	102/km²
Water area %	4.7%	0.02%	2.16%	1.1%	0.99%	1.09%	2.61%	2.97%	0.13%	0.6%	1.3%
GDP (nominal) total (2016)	$12.269 billion	$16.324 billion	$49.364 billion	$49.928 billion	$194.594 billion	$10.424 billion	$4.182 billion	$181.944 billion	$37.381 billion	$43.791 billion	$751 billion
GDP (nominal) per capita (2015)	$11,301	$10,492	$19,097	$21,581	$26,449	$14,009	$16,123	$20,787	$13,671	$31,007	$18,035
Gini Index (2012)	29.0	33.0	36.0	32.0	36.7	43.2	33.2	27.3	29.7	25.6	40.0
HDI (2015)	0.733 (High)	0.733 (High)	0.782 (High)	0.818 (Very High)	0.865 (Very High)	0.747 (High)	0.802 (Very High)	0.793 (High)	0.771 (High)	0.880 (Very High)	0.761 (High)
Internet TLD	.al	.ba	.bg	.hr	.gr	.mk	.me	.ro	.rs	.si	.tr
Calling code	+355	+387	+359	+385	+30	+389	+382	+40	+381	+386	+90

Demographics

The region is inhabited by Albanians, Aromanians, Bulgarians, Bosniaks, Croats, Gorani, Greeks, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, Slovenes, Romanians, Turks, and other ethnic groups which present minorities in certain countries like the Romani and Ashkali.

State	Population (2015)	Density/km2 (2013)	Life expectancy	Notes
Albania	2,893,005	101	78.1 years
Bosnia and Herzegovina	3,825,334	75	76.6 years
Bulgaria	7,202,198	67	74.4 years
Croatia	4,225,316	76	76.6 years
Greece	9,282,837	86	80.4 years	The population only of Mainland Greece, that excludes the Ionian and Aegean Islands, which otherwise has a population of 10,815,197 and a density of 82.
Macedonia	2,069,172	85	76 years
Montenegro	622,099	46	76.4 years
Romania	19,861,408	87	74.9 years
Serbia	7,111,973	82	75.2 years
Slovenia	2,062,874	102	78 years
Turkey	10,620,739	97	78 years	The population only of European Turkey, that excludes the Anatolian peninsula, which otherwise has a population of 75,627,384 and a density of 97.

Religion

The region is a meeting point of Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Roman Catholic Christianity. Eastern Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both the Balkan peninsula and the Balkan region. A variety of different traditions of each faith are practiced, with each of the Eastern Orthodox countries having its own national church. A part of the population in the Balkans defines itself as irreligious.

The Jewish communities of the Balkans were some of the oldest in Europe and date back to ancient times. These communities were Sephardi Jews, except in Romania where the Jewish communities were Ashkenazi Jews. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the small and close-knit Jewish community is 90% Sephardic, and Ladino is still spoken among the elderly. The Sephardi Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo has tombstones of a unique shape and inscribed in ancient Ladino. Sephardi Jews used to have a large presence in the city of Thessaloniki, and by 1900, some 80,000, or more than half of the population, were Jews. The Jewish communities in the Balkans suffered immensely during World War II, and the vast majority were killed during the Holocaust. An exception were the Bulgarian Jews, most of whom were saved by Boris III of Bulgaria, who resisted Adolf Hitler, opposing their deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Almost all of the few survivors have emigrated to the (then) newly founded state of Israel and elsewhere. No Balkan country today has a significant Jewish minority.

Languages

The Balkan region today is a very diverse ethno-linguistic region, being home to multiple Slavic, and Romance languages, as well as Albanian, Greek, Turkish, and others. Romani is spoken by a large portion of the Romanis living throughout the Balkan countries. Throughout history many other ethnic groups with their own languages lived in the area, among them Thracians, Illyrians, Romans, Celts and various Germanic tribes. All of the aforementioned languages from the present and from the past belong to the wider Indo-European language family, with the exception of the Turkic languages (e.g., Turkish and Gagauz).

State	Principal language	Linguistic minorities
Albania	98% Albanian	2% other
Bosnia and Herzegovina	53% Bosnian	31% Serbian, 15% Croatian, 2% other
Bulgaria	78% Bulgarian	8% Turkish, 4% Romani, 1% other, 10% unspecified
Croatia	96% Croatian	1% Serbian, 3% other
Greece	99% Greek	1% other
Macedonia	67% Macedonian	25% Albanian, 4% Turkish, 2% Romani, 1% Serbian, 2% other
Montenegro	43% Serbian	37% Montenegrin (official), 5% Bosnian, 5% Albanian, 5% other, 4% usnepcified
Romania	91% Romance	7% Hungarian, 1% Romani
Serbia	88% Serbian	3% Hungarian, 2% Bosnian, 1% Romani, 3% other, 2% unspecified
Slovenia	91% Slovene	5% Serbo-Croatian, 4% other
Turkey	84% Turkish	12% Kurdish, 4% other and unspecified

Urbanization

Most of the states in the Balkans are predominantly urbanized; the exceptions being Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo each being about 50% rural and 50% urban.

A list of largest cities:

City	Country	Population	Agglomeration	Year
Istanbul*	Turkey	9,000,000	10,000,000	2014
Bucharest	Romania	1,883,425	2,272,163	2011
Sofia	Bulgaria	1,260,120	1,681,666	2014
Belgrade	Serbia	1,166,763	1,659,440	2011
Zagreb	Croatia	688,163	1,113,111	2011
Athens	Greece	664,046	3,753,783	2011
Skopje	North Macedonia	444,800	506,926	2014
Tirana	Albania	418,495	800,986	2011
Plovdiv	Bulgaria	341,567	404,665	2014
Varna	Bulgaria	335,949	344,775	2014
Thessaloniki	Greece	325,182	1,012,297	2011
Cluj-Napoca	Romania	324,576	411,379	2011
Timișoara	Romania	319,279	384,609	2011
Iași	Romania	290,422	382,484	2011
Constanța	Romania	283,872	425,916	2011
Ljubljana	Slovenia	278,789	537,712	2013
Novi Sad	Serbia	277,522	341.625	2011
Sarajevo	Bosnia	275,524	688,354	2013
Craiova	Romania	269,506	420,000	2011
Çorlu	Turkey	253,500	273,362	2014
Brașov	Romania	253,200	369,896	2011

* Only the European part of Turkey is a part of the Balkans. It is home to two thirds of the city's 14,025,646 inhabitants.

Culture

• Cuisine of the Balkans
• Balkan music

See also

• Balkan Insight
• Balkan languages
  • Balkan sprachbund
• Balkan Universities Network
• Balkanization
• History of the Balkans
  • Balkan wars
  • Historical regions of the Balkan Peninsula
• List of Roman Catholic dioceses in the Balkans
• Music of Southeastern Europe
• Orient Express

Notes

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Sources

• Gray, Colin S. (1999). Geopolitics, Geography and Strategy. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7146-8053-8.
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External links

• SEEurope.net—news coverage on Southeastern Europe
• Southeast European Times
• Balkan Insight – Analysis from Balkans
• Balkanalysis, in-depth research on Balkan geopolitics
• Western Balkans Photo impression
• Balkan Business News
• Balkanalysis.com- Objective Analysis, Research and News on the Balkans
• Balkans Geo-Tourism by National Geographic
• Shared Pasts in Central and Southeast Europe, 17th–21st Centuries. Eds. G.Demeter, P. Peykovska. 2015

v t e Countries on the Balkan Peninsula
Geographically fully located	Albania Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Kosovo Montenegro North Macedonia
Significantly located	Greece (mainland) Serbia (Central Serbia)
Partially located	Croatia (southern mainland) Slovenia (south-western part)
Mostly outside the peninsula	Italy (Monfalcone and Trieste) Romania (Northern Dobruja) Turkey (East Thrace)
See also	Balkan languages (Sprachbund) Balkanization History of the Balkans Southeast Europe

42°00′00″N 22°00′00″E / 42.0000°N 22.0000°E / 42.0000; 22.0000

• Balkans
• Geography of Southeastern Europe
• Peninsulas of Europe
• Regions of Europe
• Southeastern Europe
• Turkish words and phrases