Im not from Europe. Can someone explain what are the Balkans exactly and why there’s “beef” between them?
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The Balkan Peninsula has always been at the crossroads between various external powers. It’s a very rugged and mountainous peninsula, which creates geographic barriers (like the Dinaric Alps and the Balkan Mountains) that tend to foster cultural and political divisions.
The peninsula has experienced multiple demographic and political changes over the past 2000 years. First unified by the Romans, the Balkans would be fought over by the Roman Empire, multiple Bulgarian Empires, the Serbian Empire, Hungary, Venice, and other smaller powers for centuries. However, the peninsula would be almost completely conquered by the Ottoman Empire by around 1500. Throughout all of those conflicts and conquests, various ethnic groups settled in the Balkans and the religious makeup of the area became very diverse. The peninsula was religiously divided between Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and it was ethnically divided between Slavic groups, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, and various other smaller ethnic groups. They lived side-by-side and usually in peace, though ethnic and religious tensions were often present at least subconsciously.
Following the 1680s, the Ottoman Empire began to stagnate and eventually decline. They were weakened by frequent wars with Russia and Austria and by failure to reform and modernize. The rise of nationalism in the 19th Century inspired various Balkan groups to rebel and establish independent nation states. Balkan revolts were a frequent occurrence between 1804 and 1912. First Greece separated in 1830 after a 9-year independence war, then Serbia and Montenegro (officially) in 1878 with Russian support, and then Bulgaria (officially) in 1908. These countries then temporarily allied together in the First Balkan War in 1912 to drive the Ottomans out of the Balkans completely.
However, these new nation states often had conflicting territorial claims since multiple ethnic groups regularly inhabited the same areas. Some groups had disputed national identities (like Macedonians and Bosnians) and would have their territory claimed by other groups. Some groups were regarded as outsiders by their new rulers and experienced discrimination and persecution. Many ethnic groups, some of whom now lived in the same countries, had historical and religious rivalries. These nationalist quarrels would be the driving force behind a series of conflicts throughout the 20th Century.
Bulgaria fought against Serbia and Greece over territorial claims during the Second Balkan War and WWI, ultimately losing both wars. After WWI, Serbia and Montenegro united with the Slavic lands under Austrian rule (Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) to form Yugoslavia. Greece fought and lost a war with Turkey over control of certain Greek-majority areas. Greece and Yugoslavia were then invaded and occupied by the Axis powers during WWII. Occupied Yugoslavia would experience a brutal ethnic and ideological conflict, with Communist partisans fighting against Axis forces, monarchist Chetniks, and Axis collaborators to eventually liberate the country. Both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria would then be under Communist rule throughout the Cold War while Greece joined NATO. The Yugoslav government tried to bury all of the WWII-era ethnic tensions and promote unity among the South Slavs, but tensions quickly re-emerged at the end of the Cold War. The country soon split apart, and the resulting Yugoslav Wars (particularly the Bosnian War) have given the Balkans an unstable and violent reputation.
The situation has since calmed down and become relatively stable, with no armed conflict since 2001, but ethnic tensions continue to varying degrees even today. Much of the drama is over past atrocities committed by various groups (mainly during WWII and the Yugoslav Wars), territorial disputes of the past and present, conflicting interpretations of their history, and various other nationalist talking points (such as the Macedonian name dispute and the existence of a Serbo-Croatian language).
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