Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What countries are on the Balkan Peninsula?
Bulgaria occupies a portion of the eastern Balkan peninsula, bordering five countries—Greece and Turkey to the south, Macedonia and Serbia to the west, and Romania to the north. The land borders have a total length of , and the coastline has a length of . Its total area of ranks it as the world's 105th-largest country. Bulgaria's geographic coordinates are 43° N 25° E. The most notable topographical features are the Danubian Plain, the Balkan Mountains, the Thracian Plain, and the Rhodope Mountains. The southern edge of the Danubian Plain slopes upward into the foothills of the Balkans, while the Danube defines the border with Romania. The Thracian Plain is roughly triangular, beginning southeast of Sofia and broadening as it reaches the Black Sea coast.
Herzegovina ( or ; Serbo-Croatian: "Hercegovina", Херцеговина, ) is the southern region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. While there is no official border distinguishing it from the Bosnian geographical region, it is sometimes asserted that the borders of the region are Dalmatia to the southwest, Montenegro to the east, Mount Maglić to the northeast, and Mount Ivan to the north. Measurements of the area range from , or around 22% of the total area of the present-day country, to , around 24% of the country.
The 49 generally recognized sovereign states listed herein include two countries that generally are classified as European or African nations but with portions of their territory being in Asia, while the two substantially but not generally recognized states are both fully encompassed in Asia. While most of Russia's area is in Asia, it generally is classified as a European country because its capital (Moscow) and most of its population is in Europe. In addition, while Egypt extends into Asia through the Sinai Peninsula, it generally is considered an African country because most of its population and geographic area is in Africa.
Romania – unitary semi-presidential republic located in Central-Southeastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea, between Bulgaria and Ukraine. It also borders Hungary, Serbia, and Moldova. It covers 238,391 square kilometres (92,043 sq mi) and has a temperate-continental climate. With 19.9 million inhabitants, it is the seventh most populous member of the European Union. Its capital and largest city, Bucharest, is the sixth largest city in the EU. It encompasses the historical regions of Wallachia (including Dobruja), Moldavia (including Bukovina), Transylvania (including Banat, Maramureș, and Crișana). "Romania" derives from the Latin "romanus", meaning "citizen of Rome".Geography of Romania
Administrative divisions of Romania
Standardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian.
After the treaty of Bucharest, some 51% of the "modern" region that was known as Macedonia was won by the Greek state (also known as Aegean or Greek Macedonia). This was the only part of Macedonia that Greece was directly interested in. Greeks regarded this land as the only true region of Macedonia as it geographically corresponded to ancient Macedon and contained an ethnically Greek majority of population. Bulgarian and other non-Greek schools in southern (Greek) Macedonia were closed and Bulgarian teachers and priests were deported as early as the First Balkan War simultaneous to deportation of Greeks from Bulgaria. The bulk of the Slavic population of southeastern Macedonia fled to Bulgaria during the Second Balkan War or was resettled there in the 1920s by virtue of a population exchange agreement. The Slavic minority in Greek Macedonia, who were referred to by the Greek authorities as "Slavomacedonians", "Slavophone Greeks" and "Bulgarisants", were subjected to a gradual assimilation by the Greek majority. Their numbers were reduced by a large-scale emigration to North America in the 1920s and the 1930s and to Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia following the Greek Civil War (1944–1949). At the same time a number of Macedonian Greeks from Monastiri (modern Bitola) entered Greece.
It covers an area of about 6,798 km2 which is 10.18% of the geographical region Macedonia. One of the regional centers is Blagoevgrad, also known as Gorna Dzumaya, the old name of the city. The region is bordering with Kyustendil Province and Sofia Province on the north, Pazardzhik Province and Smolyan Province on the east, Greece on the south and Republic of Macedonia on the west. The population is estimated around 325.000 people.
Regarding rivers, the Danube was navigable throughout its entire course in Yugoslavia, linking the ports of Belgrade, Novi Sad, and Vukovar with Central Europe and the Black sea. Long stretches of rivers Sava, Drava and Tisza were also navigable.
Albanian () is an Indo-European language spoken by over 7.3 million people world-wide, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and Greece. Albanian is also spoken in centuries-old Albanian-based dialect speaking communities scattered in southern Greece, southern Italy, Sicily, Ukraine and the Albanian diaspora. Within Macedonia, Albanian is spoken in Western parts of the Republic.
The area of Turkey is ; "land:" , "water:" .
In parallel, the Eastern Question grew more complex ever since the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). As the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire seemed imminent, the Great Powers struggled to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains. The Russian Empire stood to benefit from the decline, whereas the Habsburg Empire and Britain perceived the preservation of the Ottoman Empire to be in their best interests. Meanwhile, the Serbian revolution (1804) and Greek War of Independence (1821) marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, which ended with the Balkan Wars in 1912-1913. Formal recognition of the "de facto" independent principalities of Montenegro, Serbia and Romania ensued at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.
Anatolia (from Greek '; "east" or "[sun]rise"), also known as Asia Minor (Medieval and Modern Greek: ', "small Asia"; ), Asian Turkey, the Anatolian peninsula, or the Anatolian plateau, is the westernmost protrusion of Asia, which makes up the majority of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Armenian Highlands to the east, and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean Seas through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the European mainland.
The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question. Suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged "de jure" in 1830. In 1821, the Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese, which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth, became the first parts of the Ottoman empire to achieve independence (in 1829). By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the "sick man" by Europeans. The suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia, Wallachia, Moldavia and Montenegro – moved towards "de jure" independence during the 1860s and 1870s.
The Moesian dialects are a group of closely related dialects of the Bulgarian language, part of the Eastern Bulgarian dialects. The Moesian dialects are spoken in northeastern Bulgaria and in the regions of Karnobat, Aytos, Burgas and Yambol in southern Bulgaria. However, due to the mass population movements that affected eastern Bulgaria during the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, nowadays, there are very few areas where only Moesian is spoken. In most areas, and especially in southern Bulgaria and Dobruja, Moesian speakers are mixed with speakers speaking Balkan dialects. As a result of this and also due to the influence of the literary language, most features of the Moesian dialects have given way to features typical for the Balkan dialects.Стойков, Стойко: Българска диалектология, Акад. изд. "Проф. Марин Дринов", 2006
Nine countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) are EU members but do not use the euro. Before joining the eurozone, a state must spend two years in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II). As of January 2017, only the National Central Bank (NCB) of Denmark participates in ERM II.
Bulgarian is the country's only official language. It's spoken by the vast majority of the Bulgarian population and used at all levels of society. It is a Slavic language, and its closest relative is Macedonian.
In a referendum in Brazil in 1993, voters rejected an attempt to restore the country's monarchy. Unsuccessful efforts to restore the monarchies of some of the Balkan states in the former Eastern Bloc continue. Former King Michael of Romania and Prince Alexander of Serbia have been allowed to return, gained some popularity, played largely apolitical public roles, but never came close to being restored to their ancestral thrones. However, in Bulgaria, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was deposed from the Bulgarian throne in 1946, was elected and recently served as the Prime Minister of his country from 2001 to 2005. The only formerly socialist country to have held a referendum on the monarchy was Albania where the claimant to his father's throne, the self-styled Leka I, lost by a huge margin.
Standard Croatian is the official language of the Republic of Croatia and, along with Standard Bosnian and Standard Serbian, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is also official in the regions of Burgenland (Austria), Molise (Italy) and Vojvodina (Serbia). Additionally, it has co-official status alongside Romanian in the communes of Carașova and Lupac, Romania. In these localities, Croats or Krashovani make up the majority of the population, and education, signage and access to public administration and the justice system are provided in Croatian, alongside Romanian.
The existence of a Macedonian language and Macedonian ethnos is highly disputed in Bulgaria. Most Bulgarians do not recognize the Macedonian language as a separate language and assert that it is a dialect of Bulgarian. There are two dialects in Bulgaria which are considered Macedonian in Macedonia: the Maleševo-Pirin (widely spoken in most of Blagoevgrad Province in Bulgaria and Delčevo region in the Republic of Macedonia) and the Ser-Drama-Lagadin-Nevrokop ones. Some linguists consider these dialects to be transitional between modern Bulgarian and Macedonian.
Serbian (српски, "srpski") is a standardized register of the Serbo-Croatian language spoken by Serbs, mainly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and Macedonia. It is official in Serbia and one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is the principal language of the Serbs. Serbian is mainly spoken in the municipalities of Čučer Sandevo (~20% of the population) and Staro Nagoričane (19%).
Outside the eurozone, a total of 22 countries and territories that do not belong to the EU have currencies that are directly pegged to the euro including 14 countries in mainland Africa (CFA franc), two African island countries (Comorian franc and Cape Verdean escudo), three French Pacific territories (CFP franc) and three Balkan countries, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark), Bulgaria (Bulgarian lev) and Macedonia (Macedonian denar). On 28 July 2009, São Tomé and Príncipe signed an agreement with Portugal which will eventually tie its currency to the euro. Additionally, the Moroccan dirham is tied to a basket of currencies, including the euro and the US dollar, with the euro given the highest weighting.
Countries within the CFA zone were allowed to impose tariffs, regulate trade and manage transport services. Zambia, Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania achieved independence in the post-colonial era. This period also saw the break down of the Federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland as well as the East African High Commission. Balkanization was a result of the movement towards a closed economy. Countries were adopting antitrade and anti-market policies. Tariff rates were 15% higher than OECD countries during the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, countries took approaches to subsidize their own local industries yet the market within the country was small-scale. Transport networks were fragmented; regulations on labor and capital flow were more regulated; prices were under control. Between 1960 and 1990, balkanisation led to disastrous results. The GDP of these regions were one-tenth of OECD countries. Balkanisation also resulted in what van de Valle called "typically fairly overvalued exchanged rates" in Africa. Balkanization contributed to what Bates, Chatsworth & Williamson claimed to be a lost decade in Africa.
The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, who mistakenly considered the Balkan Mountains the dominant mountain system of Southeast Europe spanning from the Adriatic Sea to the Black Sea. The term of Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey in the 19th century, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe. It had a geopolitical rather than a geographical definition, further promoted during the creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the early 20th century. The definition of the Balkan peninsula natural borders are not coinciding with the technical definition of a peninsula and hence modern geographers are rejecting the idea of a Balkan peninsula, while the scholars usually discuss the Balkans as a region. The term steadily got, especially since the 1990s, a stigmatized and pejorative meaning related to the process of Balkanization, and hence for the region is rather used alternative term Southeast Europe.
The Balkans, also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings, including geopolitical and historical. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the whole of Bulgaria from the Serbian-Bulgarian border to the Black Sea coast. The Balkan Peninsula is bordered by the Adriatic Sea on the northwest, the Ionian Sea on the southwest, the Aegean Sea in the south and southeast, and the Black Sea on the east and northeast. The northern border of the peninsula is variously defined. The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala, , in the Rila mountain range.
Macedonia () is a geographical and historical region of the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. Its boundaries have changed considerably over time; however, it came to be defined as the modern geographical region by the mid 19th century. Nowadays the region is considered to include parts of six Balkan countries: Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, and Kosovo. It covers approximately and has a population of 4.76 million.