Macedonian Slavs
The neutrality of this article is disputed.The Macedonians are an ethnic group which inhabits the wider Macedonian region and speaks the Macedonian language. They are also generally associated with the Macedonian Orthodox Church. They are said to be the descendents of ancient Macedonian Thracian, Illyrian, and Slavic tribes.
Ever since the 1913 Balkan Wars when Macedonia, previously part of Rumelia, was carved up between the Balkan nations, the status of the Macedonians has been a controversial issue. The northern parts of the historic province of Macedonia came under Serbian rule, the southern under Greece and the eastern under Bulgaria. Each of the three countries has tended to regard the Macedonians as a subset of their own peoples: hence the Serbs regard them as Serbs, the Bulgarians as Bulgarians and the Greeks as Greeks. After the Balkan wars (1912-13) and especially after the Greek-Turkish population exchanges of the 1920s, ethnic Macedonians came under severe pressure in their regions of Northern Greece, with many forced to leave the country; for many years, the Greek government denied their existence as a national minority and many of the border villages were closed to outsiders, ostensibly for security reasons.
The issue continued to be a source of political tensions throughout the 20th century, especially after the secession of the Republic of Macedonia from the former Yugoslavia in 1991. The creation of the state that shares the name with a wider region was seen by many as an expression of territorial pretensions towards neighbouring states, especially coupled with the usage of symbols from ancient Macedon. However, the Macedonians have since largely modified their stance, their symbols and the constitution of their state in an attempt to avoid such an implication.
Serbia and Montenegro recognizes the Macedonian minority on its territory. The authorities in Bulgaria maintain cordial relations with them but consider them to be Bulgarians, and the Constitutional Court banned a Pirin Macedonian political party in 2000 as separatist. The Greek government has denied legal recognition to any ethnic minorities other than Turks, and opposes the use of the term "Macedonians" to refer to the ethnic Macedonian minority centred on the northern Greek town of Florina. This has earned Greece considerable criticism from international human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch.
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