Macedonia (Greece)
Macedonia (; , "Makedonía" ) is a geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and Greek region, with a population of 2.38 million in 2017. The region is highly mountainous, with most major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Thrace, and sometimes also Thessaly and Epirus, it is part of Northern Greece. It also contains Mount Athos, an autonomous monastic region of Greece.
United Macedonia
In the modern era, ethnic Macedonian nationalists have called for a "United Macedonia" since 1989, reading "Solun (Thessaloniki) is ours" and "We fight for a United Macedonia". Several maps depicting "United Macedonia" as an independent country which constitute clear evidence of irredentist claims of Macedonian nationalists against both Greek and Bulgarian territory circulated since the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. In one of those maps all of Mount Olympus was incorporated in the territory of "United Macedonia". The Macedonian nationalists break down the region of Macedonia as follows:Ethnic Macedonian nationalists describe the above areas as the unliberated parts of Macedonia and they claim that the majority of the population in those territories are oppressed ethnic Macedonians. In the cases of Bulgaria and Albania, it is said that they are undercounted in the censuses (In Albania, there are officially 5,000 ethnic Macedonians, whereas Macedonians nationalists claim the figures are more like 120,000-350,000. In Bulgaria, there are officially 1,600 ethnic Macedonians, whereas Macedonian nationalists claim 200,000. In Greece, there is a Slavic-speaking minority with various self-identifications (Macedonian, Greek, Bulgarian), estimated by Ethnologue and the Greek Helsinki Monitor as being between 100,000-200,000 (according to the Greek Helsinki Monitor only an estimated 10,000-30,000 have an ethnic Macedonian national identity). The Macedonian government, led by nationalist party VMRO–DPMNE, claimed that there is a Macedonian minority numbering up to 750,000.