Republic of Macedonia

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The Republic of Macedonia, or Macedonia*, is an independent state on the Balkan peninsula in southeastern Europe. The country borders Serbia and Montenegro to the north, Albania to the west, Greece to the south, and Bulgaria to the east.

The capital is Skopje with more than 600,000 inhabitants. It has a number of smaller cities, notably Bitola, Prilep, Tetovo, Kumanovo, Ohrid, Veles, Stip, and Strumica.

The Republic of Macedonia is often called a land of lakes and mountains. There are more than 50 natural and artificial lakes and sixteen mountain ranges higher than 2000 metres above sea level.

The country is member of the UN, Council of Europe, associate member of La Francophonie, World Trade Organization (WTO), Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, since December 2005 it is a candidate for joining the European Union, and is also expecting NATO membership.

1 History
2 Geography
3 Demographics
4 Related

[edit] History

The lands governed by the Republic of Macedonia were previously the southernmost part of Yugoslavia. Its current borders were fixed shortly after World War II when the government of Yugoslavia established the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, recognizing the Macedonians as a separate nation within Yugoslavia.

In the past, these lands came under a number of ancient states and former empires; Paionia, the kingdom of ancient Macedon (which gave its name to the whole Macedonian region).It must be noted though,that the ancient kingdom of Macedon was centered in what is known today as Greek Macedonia and its boundaries did not exceed the modern town of Bitola in the Republic of Macedonia[1].Later the area became part of the Roman and Byzantine empires, and the medieval Bulgarian and Serbian states. In the 14th century the region was conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

Following the two Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the wider region of Macedonia was divided between Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The territory of the present-day Republic of Macedonia was then known as Južna Srbija, "Southern Serbia", but had no separate or autonomous identity at the time. After the First World War Serbia joined the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929, the kingdom was officially renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and divided into provinces called banovinas. Southern Serbia, including all of what is now the Republic of Macedonia, became a part of the Vardar Banovina.

In 1941, Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis Powers and the Vardar Banovina was divided between its neighbors, Bulgaria and Italian-occupied Albania. Harsh rule by the occupying forces encouraged many Macedonians to support the Communist Partisan resistance movement of Josip Broz Tito. After the end of the Second World War, when Tito became Yugoslavia's president, the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was established. The People's Republic of Macedonia became one of the six republics of the Yugoslav federation. Following the federation's renaming as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963, the People's Republic of Macedonia was likewise renamed, becoming the Socialist Republic of Macedonia. It dropped the "Socialist" from its name in 1991 when it peacefully seceded from Yugoslavia. A few very minor changes to its border with Serbia were agreed upon to resolve problems with the demarcation line between the two countries.

The country officially celebrates 8 September 1991 as Independence day, with regard to the referendum by registered voters endorsing independence from Yugoslavia. The Republic of Macedonia remained at peace through the Yugoslav wars of the early 1990s but was destabilized by the Kosovo War in 1999, when an estimated 360,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo took refuge in the country. Although they departed shortly after the war, soon after, Albanian radicals on both sides of the border took up arms in pursuit of autonomy or independence for the Albanian-populated areas of the Republic. A short war was fought between government and ethnic Albanian rebels, mostly in the north and west of the country, in March-June 2001. This war ended with the intervention of a NATO ceasefire monitoring force and the government's promising to devolve greater political power and cultural recognition to the Albanian minority. In 2005, Macedonia was officially recognized as a European Union candidate nation.

[edit] Geography

A landlocked country, the Republic of Macedonia encompasses only a part of the wider geographical region of Macedonia in the Balkans. The remainder is divided between neighbouring Greece (with about half of the total), Bulgaria (with under a tenth), and Albania.

Macedonia's terrain is mostly rugged, located between the Šar and Rhodope mountains around the valley of the Vardar river. Three large lakes - Lake Ohrid, Lake Prespa and Dojran Lake - lie on the southern borders of the Republic, bisected by the frontiers with Albania and Greece. The region is seismically active and has been the site of destructive earthquakes in the past, most recently in 1963 when Skopje was heavily damaged by a major earthquake.

The Republic of Macedonia also has scenic mountains. They are belong to two different ranges: Dinarska and Rodopska. The mountains belonging to the Dinarska range are older with subsequent erosion; the Rodopska range is younger offering rugged, alpine sceneries.

[edit] Demographics

Main article: Demographics of the Republic of Macedonia

[edit] Population

The Republic of Macedonia has a population of approximately 2 070 000 citizens, according to the last population census in 2002. In the urban areas are inhabited 58% of the population.

The Republic's biggest city by far is Skopje, the capital, with an estimated 600,000 inhabitants, followed by:

Bitola (85 000)
Kumanovo (70 000)
Prilep (70 000)
Tetovo (60 000)
Veles (47 000)
Ohrid (43 000)

See also: List of cities in the Republic of Macedonia

[edit] Ethnicities

The Republic of Macedonia is an ethnically diverse country. The largest ethnic group in the country are the Macedonians. In the last population census, approximately 1 300 000 inhabitants declared themselves to be Macedonians, which represents 64% of the total population. Approximately 500 000 inhabitants are declared as Albanians, representing 25% of the population. They are concentrated mostly in the western and north-western part of the country. Smaller minorities include Turks (78,000 or 3.9%), Roma (54,000 or 2.7%) and Serbs (36,000 or 1.8%). Several other minorities also exist, including Aromanians, Bosniaks, Croats, Egyptians, Greeks, Bulgarians and several others, they account for less than 2.5% of the population of the country. The Macedonian national census records all these ethnic groups, but the smaller ones are not enumerated separately in the final report of the census.

See also: Macedonians
See also: Albanians in the Republic of Macedonia

[edit] Languages

A wide variety of languages are spoken in the Republic of Macedonia, reflecting its ethnic diversity. The official and most widely spoken language is Macedonian, which belongs to the South Slavic language group.Structurally, it is closer to Bulgarian than to other Slavonic langages, though it contains many words of Greek origin. Its current form was codified after WWII and has accumulated a thriving literary tradition.

Other languages – including Albanian, Turkish, Serbian, Aromanian, Greek, Romany and Megleno-Romanian – are spoken roughly in proportion with their associated ethnic groups.

Although Macedonian is the country's official national language, in municipalities where at least 20% of the population is from other ethnic minorities their individual languages are used for official purposes in local government. The languages of the minorities, for example the Albanian language, can also be used in the national parliament and other national level institutions.

[edit] Religion

The majority of the population belongs to the Macedonian Orthodox Church (66%). Muslims comprise 29% of the population and other Christian denominations comprise 0.2%. The remainder is recorded as "unspecified" in the 2002 national census. Most of the native Albanians, Turks and Bosniaks are Muslims, as are a minority of the country's ethnic Slavic Macedonian population, known as Macedonian Muslims. Altogether, there are more than 1200 churches and 400 mosques in the country. The Orthodox and Islamic religious communities have secondary religion schools in Skopje. There is an Orthodox Theological college in the capital.