Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The southernmost “republic” of the former Yugoslavia was Macedonia, which in 1991 emerged from the wreckage as an independent state with a mere 2 million inhabitants, of whom about two-thirds are Macedonian Slavs. As the map shows, Macedonia adjoins Muslim Albania and Kosovo, and its northwestern corner is home to the 33 percent of the Macedonians who are nominally Muslims. The remainder of this culturally diverse population are Turks, Serbs, and Roma (Gypsies). Macedonia is one of Europe’s poorest countries, landlocked and powerless. Even its very name caused it problems: Greece, Macedonia’s neighbor to the south, argued that this name was Greek property and therefore would not recognize it. Macedonia also confronts a long-running autonomy movement among its Albanian citizens, requiring the allocation of scarce resources to hold this fragile state of 2.2 million together." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 187]