Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What countries are on the Balkan Peninsula?
The Balkans are usually said to comprise Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo,[a] the Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia, while Greece and Turkey are often excluded. Its total area is usually given as 666,700 square km (257,400 square miles) and the population as 59,297,000 (est. 2002).[38][39]
The term "the Balkans" is used more generally for the region; it includes states in the region, which may extend beyond the peninsula, and is not defined by the geography of the peninsula itself.
The Balkans, also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographic area in southeastern Europe with various definitions and meanings,[1][2] including geopolitical and historical.[3] 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.[4] The highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala, 2,925 metres (9,596ft), in the Rila mountain range.
From 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria and some Dalmatian areas (like Zara, today's 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 their definition of the Balkans that limits its western border to the Kupa River.[33]
The following list is for all of the countries to occupy Balkan territory with the exception of and , the information contained is for all airports on those territories.
Sometimes the European part of is considered part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Istanbul Atatürk Airport is located there. It had 67,981,446 passengers in 2018, placing it on the top spot in the list. The ( ) Romanian airports that are considered to be on the Balkan Peninsula are Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport in Constanța and Tulcea Airport in Tulcea. They have respectively 129,235 and 158 passenger traffic.
The concept of the Balkan peninsula was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808,[5] 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,[4][6] and hence for the region is rather used alternative term Southeast Europe.
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.
For a small country, Albania plays an important role in maintaining and ensuring the long term survival of the large carnivores of the western and southern Balkan Peninsula. The carnivores seem to be mainly distributed in the last remaining forests throughout the country especially in the areas around the Albanian Alps in the north, the Korab Mountains in the east and the scattered high areas in the south, such as in the Karaburun Peninsula, Valamara Mountains and Nemërçka Mountains.
In terms of shape, Europe is a collection of connected peninsulas and nearby islands. The two largest peninsulas are mainland Europe and Scandinavia to the north, divided from each other by the Baltic Sea. Three smaller peninsulas—Iberia, Italy and the Balkans—emerge from the southern margin of the mainland. The Balkan peninsula is separated from Asia by the Black and Aegean Seas. Italy is separated from the Balkans by the Adriatic Sea, and from Iberia by the Mediterranean Sea, which also separates Europe from Africa. Eastward, mainland Europe widens much like the mouth of a funnel, until the boundary with Asia is reached at the Ural Mountains and Ural River, the Caspian Sea and Caucasus Mountains.
By the end of the 1st century AD, Roman governance was established over the entire Balkan Peninsula and Christianity began spreading in the region around the 4th century. The Gothic Bible—the first Germanic language book—was created by Gothic bishop Ulfilas in what is today northern Bulgaria around 381. The region came under Byzantine control after the fall of Rome in 476. The Byzantines were engaged in prolonged warfare against Persia and could not defend their Balkan territories from barbarian incursions. This enabled the Slavs to enter the Balkan Peninsula as marauders, primarily through an area between the Danube River and the Balkan Mountains known as Moesia. Gradually, the interior of the peninsula became a country of the South Slavs, who lived under a democracy. The Slavs assimilated the partially Hellenized, Romanized, and Gothicized Thracians in the rural areas.
The landlocked country of Kosovo lies in the heart of the Balkan Peninsula in Southeastern Europe. It borders the countries of Montenegro to the west, Serbia to the north and east, the Republic of Macedonia to the southeast and Albania to the southwest. The land area of the country is , being the 161st largest country in the world.
The Balkan mountain range (Bulgarian and , "Stara planina", "Old Mountain"; , ) is a mountain range in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula. The Balkan range runs 560 km from the Vrashka Chuka Peak on the border between Bulgaria and Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea. The highest peaks of the Balkan Mountains are in central Bulgaria. The highest peak is Botev at 2,376 m, which makes the mountain range the third highest in the country, after Rila and Pirin. The mountains are the source of the name of the Balkan Peninsula.
Albania is a country on the Balkan Peninsula in south-eastern Europe.
Albania may also refer to:
Krahe writes in A1, chapter III, "Introducing preface" Number 2 that the old European hydronomy extended from Scandinavia to South Italy, from Western Europe including the British Isles to the Baltic countries. Of the three Mediterranean peninsulas, Italy was most completely included, whilst the Balkan Peninsula was only scarcely covered. He writes that what he presents for hydronomy also applies to mountains and ranges of mountains, and continues with "Karpaten" and "Karawanken", certainly within the Slavic settlement area, omitting the Bavarian/Austrian "Karwendel" though. This area is associated with the spread of the later "Western" Indo-European dialects, the Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Baltic, and Illyrian branches. Notably exempt is Greece.
Cvijić conducted a pioneering human-geographical survey in "Balkan Peninsula 1918", 1922–I, 1931–II, based on his research of Balkan personality types. He researched for 38 years, leading expeditions in the Balkans, the southern Carpathian Mountains and Anatolia which produced a number of research papers. Cvijić's two-volume "Geomorphology" is an important starting point for research into the Balkan peninsula.
Europe lies to the north, and three large Southern European peninsulas, the Iberian Peninsula, Italian Peninsula, and the Balkan Peninsula, extend into the Mediterranean-climate zone. A system of folded mountains, including the Pyrenees dividing Spain from France, the Alps dividing Italy from Central Europe, the Dinaric Alps along the eastern Adriatic, and the Balkan and Rhodope mountains of the Balkan Peninsula divide the Mediterranean from the temperate climate regions of Western and Central Europe.
Grace Blakely is a sixteen year old American who grew up between her native country and the fictional Mediterranean nation of Adria, located in the Balkan Peninsula, which she has roots in. Grace's mother Caroline was killed in what she believes was a murder, but is told by her family was a fire. Grace remembers the face of a man with a large scar who was on the scene of Caroline's death, and believes he was responsible for the murder.
The migrations of people within the Balkan countries as well as outside arrivals played an important role in the spread of Islam. Some of these migrations had religious and missionary purposes. For instance, the traveling of Sari Saltuq, an ecstatic Sufi devotee mentioned even by Ibn Battuta in 1332–1334, was well known among the Balkan people. Specific towns and specific topographical localities are associated with his story. He, furthermore, has various tombs in different countries in the Balkan Peninsula. Thus, as early as the 13th and especially during the 14th century, many mystic and nomad imams groups appeared in the Christian countries, where they propagated their faith and helped people to get more knowledge about Islam.
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.
The Republic of Macedonia is in its position a continental country in the middle of the Balkan peninsula, and the main transport links in the country are those that connect the different parts of the peninsula (transbalkan links). Particularly important is the connection between north-south and Vardar valley, which connects Greece with the rest of Europe.
The region is a meeting point of Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Roman Catholic Christianity.[85] 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.
Share of land area[34] within the Balkan Peninsula by country by the Danube-Sava definition:
The strategic location of the country on the Balkan Peninsula is decisive for the fact that 4 out of 10 land Pan-European corridors run through it.
In the Pliocene on the Balkan peninsula peafowl (Bravard's peafowl) coexisted with ptarmigans ("Lagopus") Peafowl were widely spread on the Balkan peninsula and the Southeast Europe until the end of the Pliocene.
The term was not commonly used in geographical literature until the mid-19th century because already then scientists like Carl Ritter warned that only the part South of the Balkan Mountains can be considered as a peninsula and considered it to be renamed as "Greek peninsula". Other prominent geographers who didn't agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn in 1869 for the same territory used the term Südostereuropäische Halbinsel ("Southeasterneuropean peninsula"). Another reason it was not commonly accepted as the definition of then European Turkey had a similar land extent. However, after the Congress of Berlin (1878) there was a political need for a new term and gradually the Balkans was revitalized, but in the maps the Northern border was in Serbia and Montenegro without Greece (it only depicted the Ottoman occupied parts of Europe), while Yugoslavian maps also included Croatia and Bosnia. The term Balkan Peninsula was a synonym for European Turkey, the political borders of former Ottoman Empire provinces.[4][23][25]