Kars İngilizce Tanıtım

Kars ingilizce tanıtım



Kars is a city in northeast Turkey and the capital of Kars Province Population: 8,672 (1878); 20,891 (1897); 54,000 (1970); 142,145 (1990); 130,361 (2000)

History

The early history of Kars is little known, beyond the fact that it had its own dynasty of Armenian rulers and was the capital of a region known as Vanand At some point in the 9th century (at least by 888) it became part of the territory of the Armenian Bagratids For a short time (from 928 to 961) Kars became the capital of their kingdom It was during this period that the Cathedral, later known as the Church of the Apostles, was built

In 963, shortly after the Bagratid capital was transferred to Ani, Kars became the capital of a separate independent kingdom, again called Vanand However, the extent of its actual independence from the Kingdom of Ani is uncertain For example, it was always held by relatives of the rulers of Ani, and after Ani’s capture by the Byzantine Empire in 1045 the Bagratid royal title “King of Kings” held by the ruler of Ani was transferred to the ruler of Kars

In 1064, just after the capture of Ani by the Seljuk Turks, the last Armenian king of Kars, Gagik II, paid homage to the victorious Turks to avoid them laying siege to his city In 1065 Gagik ceded control of Kars to the Byzantine Empire, but soon afterwards they lost it to the Seljuk Turks In 1206/1207 the city was captured by the Georgians and given to the same Zakarid family who ruled Ani They retained control of Kars until the late 1230s, after which it was ruled by a series of petty Turkish emirs

In 1387 the city surrendered to Timur (Tamerlane) and its fortifications were slighted More petty Turkish emirs followed until 1534, when the Ottoman army captured the city The fortifications of the city were rebuilt by the Ottoman Sultan Murad III and were strong enough to withstand a siege by Nadir Shah of Persia, in 1731 It became the head of a sanjak in the Turkish vilayet of Erzurum

In 1807 it successfully resisted the Russians, but after another siege in 1828 it was surrendered on June 23, 1828 to the Russian general Count Ivan Paskevich, 11,000 men becoming prisoners of war Although it was afterwards returned to Turkey, the new border between Turkey and Russia lay much closer to Kars During the Crimean War the Turkish garrison, led by General William Fenwick Williams and other foreign officers, kept the Russians at bay during a protracted siege; but after the garrison had been devastated by cholera and food had utterly failed, nothing was left but to surrender to General Mouravieff in November 1855

The fortress was again stormed by the Russians in the Battle of Kars during the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 under generals Loris-Melikov and Ivan Lazarev and on its conclusion was transferred to Russia by the Treaty of San Stefano Kars became the capital of Kars Oblast (province), comprising the districts of Kars, Ardahan, Kağızman, and Oltu

After the subjection to Russia more than 82000 Muslims emigrated to Turkey within the period of 1878-1881, of them more than 11 000 left the city itself At the same time, many Armenians, Greeks and Russians migrated to the region from other regions of Turkey and Transcaucasia According to the Russian census data, by 1892 Russians made 7%, Greeks 135%, Kurds 15%, Armenians 21,5%, Turks 24%, Karapapakhs 14%, and Turkmen 5% of the population of Kars oblast of the Russian empire

In the First World War, the city became one of the main objectives of the Ottoman army during the Battle of Sarıkamış in the Caucasus Campaign

Russia ceded Kars, Ardahan and Batum to the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918 However, by then Kars was under the effective control of Armenian and non-Bolshevik Russian forces The Ottoman empire captured Kars on April 25, 1918 and the Republic of Southwest Caucasus was established in the zone, but when the Armistice of Mudros (October 1918) was established the Ottoman army was required to withdraw to the 1914 frontiers The British occupied Batumi but the Ottomans refused to relinquish Kars; its military governor instead constituting a provisional government led by Fahrettin Pirioglu that claimed Turkish sovereignty over Kars and the Turkish-speaking and Islamic neighbouring regions as far as Batumi and Alexandropol (Gyumri) The region was occupied by the Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) in January 1919 but the pro-Turkish government remained in the city until the arrival of the British troops, who dissolved it on April 19, 1919, sending its leaders to Malta May 1919, Kars came under full administration of the DRA and became the capital of the Vanand province (named after the historic Armenian region that the city was once the capital of)

Throughout all the obstacles of Kars, a heroic leader, priest and renaissance man by the name of Ter Hovhaness Avak Dourian Hadjian, was essential in the preservation of Kars and has published a biography on his life and the events surrounding Kars He has also writings in his personal collection, “The Last Days of Kars”(Karsi Verchin Orere) and many other diaries