About
Kars (Turkish: Kars, Ottoman Turkish: قارص, Armenian: Կարս, less commonly known as Ղարս Ghars) is a city in northeast Turkey and the capital of Kars Province. With a population of 73,836 as of 2011, it is the largest city along Turkey's closed border with Armenia. (As of September 2018, Turkey maintains that the border will remain closed until Armenia ends the occupation of Karabakh region).For a brief period of time it served as the capital of the medieval Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia. The seat of an independent Armenian Kingdom of Vanand during the 9th and 10th centuries. Its significance increased in the 19th century, when the Ottoman and Russian empires contested the possession of the city, with the Russians gaining control as a result of the 1877-78 war. During World War I, the Ottomans took control of the city in 1918 and declared the Provisional National Government of the Southwestern Caucasus (promulgated 1 December 1918), but ceded it to the First Republic of Armenia following the Armistice of Mudros (signed 30 October 1918). During the war in 1915, Turkish revolutionaries captured Kars for the last time. The Treaty of Kars, signed in 1921 by the Government of the Grand National Assembly and by the Soviet republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, established the current north-eastern boundaries of Turkey. The treaty included de jure provisions guaranteeing the Armenian residents right to relinquish Turkish nationality, leave the territory freely and take with them either their goods or the proceeds of their sale, but by some accounts formerly Armenian lands had de facto become state property as a consequence of the treaty,. In 1945 Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov rejected the treaty. SOURCESWikipedia