Im not from Europe. Can someone explain what are the Balkans exactly and why there’s “beef” between them?
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the balkans are the area of europe that basically sits east of Italy. places like Slovenia, Hungary, etc all the way south to greece. Historicaly, the area was controlled by the Austrian and Ottoman empires, with the two fighting and regions changing hands on and off for centuries.
ok, the VERT short version of the beef is that theirs a multitude of different cultural/ethnic groups all living in the area, and everyone is *heavily* intermingled with each other. As the empires that used to control the area declined in the 19th century, various ethnic groups spilt off and formed nation-states that tended to be dominated by one ethnic group or another, and borders were worked out that either conformed to old administrative regions or were forged by war.
HOWEVER, their were and still is significant intermingling of ethnic groups across these new national borders, and people generally* want to be in “their” ethnic groups nation, and want thier home area to be in that nation.
Its not a case of “all the blues on the west of the border, all the reds on the east”, but a spectrum running form “mostly blue” to “mostly red”. the tension comes form where you draw the line in that mix of purples in the middle and say “this is the end of red, everything beyond this is blue”. You might say “blue starts here”, but i think it that includes lots of what i think is still red, and blue starts over *there*. Theirs other issues layering on top of this, including pre-national historical and religious grievances (the whole area is the border between the Christian and Muslim regions, and whichever side was in power this century tended to treat the other faith poorly), but its basically boils down to the lines on the map not matching with what people think they “should” be.
*obviously, not everyone in every ethnic group wants to unify under “thier” ethnic state, their are dissenters who are happy with the current borders, people are never totally unanimous on *anything*.
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