Turks in North Macedonia in the context of "Plasnica Municipality"

North Macedonia, officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the north. It constitutes approximately the northern third of the larger geographical region of Macedonia. Skopje, the capital and largest city, is home to a quarter of the country's population of over 1.83 million. The majority of the residents are ethnic Macedonians, a South Slavic people. Albanians form a significant minority at around 25%, followed by Turks, Roma, Serbs, Bosniaks, Aromanians and a few other minorities.

The region's history begins with the kingdom of Paeonia. In the late sixth century BC, the area was subjugated by the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then incorporated into the Kingdom of Macedonia in the fourth century BC. The Roman Republic conquered the region in the second century BC and made it part of its larger province of Macedonia. The area remained part of the Byzantine Empire, but was often raided and settled by Slavic tribes beginning in the sixth century CE. Following centuries of contention between the Bulgarian, Byzantine, and Serbian Empires, it was part of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-14th until the early 20th century, when, following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, the modern territory of North Macedonia came under Serbian rule.

The Torbeši (Macedonian: Торбеши) are a Macedonian-speaking Muslim ethnoreligious group in North Macedonia and Albania. The Torbeši are also referred to as Macedonian Muslims (Macedonian: Македонци-муслимани, romanized: Makedonci-muslimani) or Muslim Macedonians. They have been religiously distinct from the Orthodox Christian Macedonian community for centuries, and are linguistically distinct from the larger Muslim ethnic groups in the greater region of Macedonia: the Albanians, Turks and Romanis. However, some Torbeši also still maintain a strong affiliation with Turkish identity and with Macedonian Turks. The regions inhabited by these Macedonian-speaking Muslims are Debarska Župa, Dolni Drimkol, Reka, and Golo Brdo (in Albania).