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Ivo Andric's novel The Bridge on the Drina deals with the town of Visegrad from the 1500s to 1914. There were Christian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims living side by side--but the Muslims were called "Turks" although they didn't speak Turkish. "Turk" simply meant "Muslim."

The Italians and the Greeks could claim all of the Balkans based on the fact that the whole peninsula belonged to the Roman Empire, and at times in the Middle Ages to the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines called themselves Romans, and the Greeks continued to call themselves Romans for the most part until the 19th century, I think, when part of Greece became an independent kingdom (under a non-Greek king).

The ancient Greeks considered the ancient Macedonians to be barbarians, but the modern Greeks claim that they were Greeks--and have prevented the Republic of Macedonia from using that name at the UN. Most of the Balkans became Slavic in the 6th or 7th century, apart from Greece and Albania, so the modern Macedonians have little to do with the ancient Macedonians. (Perhaps they inherited some DNA...language changes don't always mean that the earlier population is wiped out.)

The modern Macedonian language is very similar to Bulgarian--if the Russians had succeeded in creating a "Big Bulgaria" in 1878 that area would use Bulgarian as their official language. Instead it was later conquered by Serbia in the Balkan Wars and called "South Serbia." Between the wars it was illegal to use the local Macedonian language--people were supposed to use Serbian instead. The Tito government recognized the Macedonians as separate from the Serbs and created the Macedonian literary language (trying to make it as different from Bulgarian as they could). Serbian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian are all related but Macedonian and Bulgarian are closer--they have features in common which are lacking in Serbian (like attaching the article to the end of a noun).

The whole Yugoslav project was an example of intellectuals thinking they know what is best for the people.