Bistrenci is one of the larger villages in Demir Kapija municipality

Demir Kapija municipality

Demir Kapija is a municipality in southern Republic of Macedonia. Demir Kapija, which means "iron door" or "iron gate" in Turkish, is also the name of the town where the municipal seat is found...

. Its population is mixed among Turks

Turkish people

Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...

, ethnic Macedonians

Macedonians (ethnic group)

The Macedonians also referred to as Macedonian Slavs: "... the term Slavomacedonian was introduced and was accepted by the community itself, which at the time had a much more widespread non-Greek Macedonian ethnic consciousness...

, Albanian

Albanians

Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...

, and Vlach. It has been has its roots in the Ottoman

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 period until the Slovenes came to harvest grapes. The Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 church was then built. Many Turkish stayed and still live in the village to this day. The Slovenes stayed until World War II, and the Macedonians inhabited the village afterwards and erected an Orthodox

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...

 community. To this day, the village is one of the few with a mosque

Mosque

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. The word is likely to have entered the English language through French , from Portuguese , from Spanish , and from Berber , ultimately originating in — . The Arabic word masjid literally means a place of prostration...

, which was recently rebuilt, a Catholic church, and an Orthodox church. The Slovenia

Slovenia

Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

n Embassy recently built a park commemorating the fallen soldiers of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The village celebrates its patron holiday, coined Panagjur, on October 27.

Sources

• Demir Kapija: From Prehistory to Today. ISBN 9989-712-65-4, P 97-8
• Macedonian census data of 2002.