Answer: Balkans, also called Balkan Peninsula, easternmost of Europe’s three great southern peninsulas. There is not universal agreement on the region’s components. The Balkans are usually characterized as comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia—with all or part of each of those countries located within the peninsula. Portions of Greece and Turkey are also located within the geographic region generally defined as the Balkan Peninsula, and many descriptions of the Balkans include those countries too. Some define the region in cultural and historical terms and others geographically, though there are even different interpretations among historians and geographers. Moreover, for some observers, the term “Balkans” is freighted with negative connotations associated with the region’s history of ethnic divisiveness and political upheaval. Increasingly in the early 21st century, another pair of definitional terms has gained currency: South East (also styled South-East, Southeast, South-Eastern, or Southeastern) Europe, which has been employed to describe the region in broad terms (though, again, without universal agreement on its component states) and the Western Balkans, which are usually said to comprise Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
