English is not my first language, apologies if some words or concepts are not completely used correctly. Currently, according to what I've heard/read, Macedonia is a country that was formed in 1991 and consists mostly of (ethnically) slavic people. I've seen a lot of people claim that "Macedonia" never existed as a country before that and was always only a region of Greece. Then I got linked to this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Bucharest_(1913)[1] where it says on Greek "gains in territory":
The territory thus annexed included large parts of Epirus and Macedonia, including Thessaloniki.
Bulgarian:
Its net gains in territory, which embraced a portion of Macedonia, Pirin Macedonia (or Bulgarian Macedonia), including the town of Strumica, Western Thrace, and 110 km of the Aegean littoral, were about 25,030 km2, and its population was increased by 129,490.[5]
Serbian:
The territory thus obtained embraced central Vardar, including Ohrid, Štip, Kočani and Bitola in present-day Macedonia. By this arrangement, Serbia increased its territory from 48,300 to 87,780 km2 and its population by more than 1.5 million.[2]
How can Greece gain territory that was "already theirs" through a treaty ? What kind of "Macedonia" are we talking about here? The country? FYROM? The province of Greece? Sorry if I am completely misinformed and it's stupidly obvious, please enlighten me!
Macedonia was historically (and remains today) a much greater region than today's Former Yugoslavic Republic of Macedonia, and now said region is a part of Greece, Bulgaria and it stretches across the whole Republic of Macedonia. During his communist dictatorship Tito broke Yugoslavia into 6 republics and it named the one in the Macedonia region "Macedonia", before that it was considered a part of Serbia. Historically Greece stretched across the whole Macedonia region which is why Alexander the Great was called Macedonian but it has nothing to do with the current Slavic population that adopted the name of the region. Hope this helps :)