The term by most definitions fully encompasses Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the mainland of Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, European Turkey, the Romanian coast, most of Serbia and large parts of Croatia.

The origin of the word Balkan is obscure; it may be related to Turkish bālk 'mud' (from Proto-Turkic *bal 'mud, clay; thick or gluey substance', cf.

[19] The first attested time the name "Balkan" was used in the West for the mountain range in Bulgaria was in a letter sent in 1490 to Pope Innocent VIII by Buonaccorsi Callimaco, an Italian humanist, writer and diplomat.

Other prominent geographers who did not agree with Zeune were Hermann Wagner, Theobald Fischer, Marion Newbigin, and Albrecht Penck, while Austrian diplomat Johann Georg von Hahn, in 1869, for the same territory, used the term Südosteuropäische Halbinsel ('Southeastern European peninsula').

The term by most definitions fully encompasses Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, European Turkey, Romanian coast, most of Serbia and large parts of Croatia.

[25] According to M. S. Altić, the term has two different meanings, "geographical, ultimately undefined, and cultural, extremely negative, and recently strongly motivated by the contemporary political context".

For some arrogant Frenchmen, Germany is associated with the Balkanian Eastern savagery—up to the extreme case of some conservative anti-European-Union Englishmen for whom, in an implicit way, it is ultimately the whole of continental Europe itself that functions as a kind of Balkan Turkish global empire with Brussels as the new Constantinople, the capricious despotic center threatening English freedom and sovereignty.

Greece is no longer Balkan proper, but the cradle of our Western civilization.Most of the area is covered by mountain ranges running from the northwest to southeast.

The tree line in the mountains lies at the height of 1,800–2,300 m. The land provides habitats for numerous endemic species, including extraordinarily abundant insects and reptiles that serve as food for a variety of birds of prey and rare vultures.

Iron ore is rare, but in some countries there is a considerable amount of copper, zinc, tin, chromite, manganese, magnesite and bauxite.

[52][53] The practices of growing grain and raising livestock arrived in the Balkans from the Fertile Crescent by way of Anatolia and spread west and north into Central Europe, particularly through Pannonia.

[61][62] The Bulgars and Slavs arrived in the sixth-century and began assimilating and displacing already-assimilated (through Romanization and Hellenization) older inhabitants of the northern and central Balkans.

[63] This migration brought about the formation of distinct ethnic groups amongst the South Slavs, which included the Bulgarians, Croats and Serbs and Slovenes.

[77] As examples, for Greeks, Constantine XI Palaiologos and Kolokotronis; and for Serbs, Miloš Obilić, Tsar Lazar and Karadjordje; for Albanians, George Kastrioti Skanderbeg; for ethnic Macedonians, Nikola Karev[78] and Goce Delčev;[78] for Bulgarians, Vasil Levski, Georgi Sava Rakovski and Hristo Botev and for Croats, Nikola Šubić Zrinjski.

"[79] Most of the Balkan nation-states emerged during the 19th and early 20th centuries as they gained independence from the Ottoman or Habsburg empires: Greece in 1821, Serbia and Montenegro in 1878, Romania in 1881, Bulgaria in 1908 and Albania in 1912.

Bulgaria insisted on its status quo territorial integrity, divided and shared by the Great Powers next to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–78) in other boundaries and on the pre-war Bulgarian-Serbian agreement.

The Ottoman Empire used the opportunity to recapture Eastern Thrace, establishing its new western borders that still stand today as part of modern Turkey.

[81] With the start of the World War II, all Balkan countries, with the exception of Greece, were allies of Nazi Germany, having bilateral military agreements or being part of the Axis Pact.

After repelling the attack, the Greeks counterattacked, invading Italy-held Albania and causing Nazi Germany's intervention in the Balkans to help its ally.

Yugoslavia, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980), first propped up then rejected the idea of merging with Bulgaria and instead sought closer relations with the West, later even spearheaded, together with India and Egypt the Non-Aligned Movement.

On 28 February 1953, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia signed the treaty of Agreement of Friendship and Cooperation in Ankara to form the Balkan Pact of 1953.

When the pact was signed, Turkey and Greece were members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), while Yugoslavia was a non-aligned communist state.

While in the non-aligned Yugoslavia, Wars between the former Yugoslav republics broke out after Slovenia and Croatia held free elections and their people voted for independence on their respective countries' referendums.

From the dissolution of Yugoslavia, six states achieved internationally recognized sovereignty: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia; all of them are traditionally included in the Balkans which is often a controversial matter of dispute.

The gross domestic product per capita is highest in Slovenia (over $29,000), followed by Croatia[101] and Greece (~$20,000), Romania, Bulgaria (over $11,000), Turkey, Montenegro, Serbia (between $10,000 and $9,000), and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia (~$7,000) and Kosovo ($5,000).

The unemployment is lowest in Romania and Bulgaria (around 5%), followed by Serbia and Albania (11–12%), Turkey, Greece, Bosnia, North Macedonia (13–16%), Montenegro (~18%), and Kosovo (~25%).

[103] As nations in the Western Balkans opened up to private investment in the 1990s, newly created enterprises (mostly SMEs) fueled regional economic development by facilitating the transition from a massive state-owned structure to a market economy.

[104] The Western Balkans are mostly bank-based economies, with bank credit serving as the primary source of external capital for all enterprises, including SMEs.

[125] Islam is the largest religion in nations like Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo with significant minorities in Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro.

Throughout history, many other ethnic groups with their own languages lived in the area, among them Thracians, Illyrians, Romans, Celts and various Germanic tribes.