Im not from Europe. Can someone explain what are the Balkans exactly and why there’s “beef” between them?
In: 2271
As others have pointed out, the Balkans are the region of southeastern europe east of Italy, west of Turkiye, and south of Ukraine and Hungary (some include Hungary but I wont).
What others haven’t pointed out (and I’m oversimplifying) is: the “beef” is largely ethnic and old tribal conflict, with religious conflict mixed in. South Slavic nations can be majority Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim.
Albanians and Romanians were inhabiting the land in the stone ages, they aren’t Slavic or Turkic, and they never really got along. Bulgarians are a mixed race between Turkic and Slavic and see themselves (and are seen) as different from other Slavs. The other Slavs were all from different Slavic tribes, which is how their nationalities and old kingdoms formed.
South Slavic conflict goes back a long time. There is a rich history of kingdoms in between the periods of imperial rule over the land. Serbia is usually considered the most powerful South Slavic nation (if you dont count Bulgaria), but their state hasnt always been kind in the way they have treated others. However, even as these Slavic nationalities don’t see eye to eye, they do have some solidarity against the other neighboring ethnicities.
A lot of Balkan people really don’t give a damn about any of this stuff, but the nations have been gripped in a power struggle since basically forever. There were a whole lot of land wars between the nations. Even when united peacefully under Rome, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans, and Yugoslavia, they continued their power games and the overall conflict seems to remain unresolved.
Basically, no Slavic kingdom was able to conquer the harsh mountainous terrain, there wasn’t a religious unity to confederate the nations under the church, and the Slavic nations have always treated imperialists harshly, so they never really united. They have no real intetest in uniting today due to the recent conflict surrounding the Yugoslav collapse, a lot of bitterness surrounding Serbia’s role in it, but there has been some recent political action regarding some sort of conglomeration between Slavic nations.
Edit: There are also many minority ethnic groups in each of the nations. Serbians and Croats in Bosnia, Croats and Bosniaks in Serbia. They are culturally quite different. Some consider them to be ethnically different, some consider them all to be ethnically South Slavic. It’s complicated.
Latest Answers