| a peninsula in S Europe, S of the Danube River and bordered by the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean, and Black seas. |
| Balkan Peninsula A peninsula of southeast Europe bounded by the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and the Aegean, Mediterranean, Ionian, and Adriatic seas. The Balkan States include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, continental Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, southeast Romania, Serbia, and European Turkey. Formerly part of the Roman and Byzantine empires, the region fell to the Ottoman Turks by 1500. The Balkan Wars (1912-1913 and 1913), treaties signed after World War I, and nationalist movements in the early 1990s led to the present country boundaries. |
Peninsula in southeastern Europe between the Ionian Sea and Adriatic Sea on the west, the Mediterranean Sea on the south, and the Aegean Sea and Black Sea on the east. The nations of the Balkan Peninsula include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, and the former Yugoslavia. The European portion of Turkey is also on the Balkan Peninsula. (See also Balkanization.)
