| Area Total Km2: | 5,785.69 |
| Established Date: | 1878 |
| Established Title: | Established |
| Extinct Date: | 3 March 1918 |
| Extinct Title: | Treaty of Brest-Litovsk |
| Mapsize: | 220px |
| Kars okrug | |
| Native Name: | Карсский округ |
| Native Name Lang: | ru |
| Population As Of: | 1916 |
| Population Density Km2: | auto |
| Population Rural: | 84.10% |
| Population Total: | 191,970 |
| Population Urban: | 15.90% |
| Seat: | Kars |
| Seat Type: | Capital |
| Settlement Type: | Okrug |
| Subdivision Name: | Russian Empire |
| Subdivision Name1: | Caucasus |
| Subdivision Name2: | Kars |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Type1: | Viceroyalty |
| Subdivision Type2: | Oblast |
| Total Type: | Total |
The Kars okrug was a district (okrug) of the Kars Oblast of the Russian Empire between 1878 and 1918. Its capital was the city of Kars, presently part of the Kars Province of Turkey and the Amasia District of Armenia. The okrug bordered with the Ardahan okrug in the north, the Kagizman okrug in the south, the Olti okrug in the west, and the Erivan Governorate to its east.
The Kars okrug was one of the four territorial administrative subunits (counties) of the Kars oblast created after its annexation into the Russian Empire in 1878 through the Treaty of San Stefano, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.[1]
During World War I, the Kars Oblast became the site of intense battles between the Russian Caucasus Army supplemented by Armenian volunteers and the Ottoman Third Army, the latter of whom was successful in briefly occupying Ardahan on 25 December 1914 before they were dislodged in early January 1915.
On 3 March 1918, in the aftermath of the October Revolution the Russian SFSR ceded the entire Kars Oblast including the Kars okrug through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Ottoman Empire, who had been unreconciled with its loss of the territory since 1878. Despite the ineffectual resistance of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic which had initially rejected the aforementioned treaty, the Ottoman Third Army was successful in occupying the Kars Oblast and expelling its 100,000 panic-stricken Armenian inhabitants.[2]
The Ottoman Ninth Army under the command of Yakub Shevki Pasha, the occupying force of the district by the time of the Mudros Armistice, were permitted to winter in Kars until early 1919, after which on 7 January 1919 Major General G.T. Forestier-Walker ordered their complete withdrawal to the pre-1914 Ottoman-frontier. Intended to hinder the westward expansion of the fledgling Armenian and Georgian republics into the Kars Oblast, Yukub Shevki backed the emergence of the short-lived South-West Caucasus Republic with moral support, also furnishing it with weapons, ammunition and instructors.[3]
The South-West Caucasus Republic administered the Kars okrug and neighboring formerly occupied districts for three months before provoking British intervention by order of General G.F. Milne, leading to its capitulation by Armenian and British forces on 10 April 1919.[4] [5] Consequently, the Kars Oblast largely came under the Armenian civil governorship of Stepan Korganian who wasted no time in facilitating the repatriation of the region's exiled refugees.[6]
Despite the apparent defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish agitators were reported by Armenian intelligence to have been freely roaming the countryside of Kars encouraging sedition among the Muslim villages, culminating in a series of anti-Armenian uprisings on 1 July 1919.[7]
The Kars Oblast for the third time in six years saw invading Turkish troops, this time under the command of General Kâzım Karabekir in September 1920 during the Turkish-Armenian War. The disastrous war for Armenia resulted in the permanent expulsion of the region's ethnic Armenian population, many who inexorably remained befalling massacre, resulting in the region joining the Republic of Turkey through the Treaty of Alexandropol on 3 December 1920. Turkey's annexation of Kars and the adjacent Surmalu Uyezd was confirmed in the treaties of Kars and Moscow in 1921, by virtue of the new Soviet regime in Armenia.[8] Again according to them, most of Aghbaba uchastok went to Soviet Armenia, remainder of it went to Turkey.
The prefectures of the Kars okrug were:
| Name | Administrative centre | 1912 population | Area | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agbabinskiy prefecture | Amasiya (Amasia) | 14,309 | 570.96verst2 | |
| Zarushadskiy prefecture | Grenaderskoye (Arpaçay) | 19,416 | 1104.11verst2 | |
| Karsskiy prefecture | Kars | 29,574 | 1352.94verst2 | |
| Soganlugskiy prefecture | Nizhniy Sarykamysh (Sarıkamış) | 23,821 | 1044.04verst2 | |
| Shuragelskiy prefecture | Kizil-Chakhchakh (Akyaka) | 39,369 | 1011.76verst2 |
According to the Russian Empire Census, the Kars okrug had a population of 134,142 on, including 75,452 men and 58,690 women. The plurality of the population indicated Armenian to be their mother tongue, with significant Karapapakh, Russian, Greek, Turkish, and Kurdish speaking minorities.[9]
| Armenian | 46,715 | 34.83 | |
| Karapapakh | 22,002 | 16.40 | |
| Russian | 16,874 | 12.58 | |
| Greek | 14,805 | 11.04 | |
| Turkish | 10,609 | 7.91 | |
| Kurdish | 9,165 | 6.83 | |
| Ukrainian | 3,297 | 2.46 | |
| Turkmen | 2,456 | 1.83 | |
| Polish | 2,093 | 1.56 | |
| Tatar | 1,439 | 1.07 | |
| Jewish | 755 | 0.56 | |
| Lithuanian | 611 | 0.46 | |
| Assyrian | 585 | 0.44 | |
| Estonian | 424 | 0.32 | |
| Ossetian | 401 | 0.30 | |
| Persian | 317 | 0.24 | |
| Georgian | 308 | 0.23 | |
| German | 294 | 0.22 | |
| Avar-Andean | 276 | 0.21 | |
| Bashkir | 206 | 0.15 | |
| Belarusian | 205 | 0.15 | |
| Dargin | 95 | 0.07 | |
| Other | 210 | 0.16 | |
| TOTAL | 134,142 | 100.00 |
|---|
According to the 1917 publication of Kavkazskiy kalendar, the Kars okrug had a population of 191,970 on, including 97,919 men and 94,051 women, 153,102 of whom were the permanent population, and 38,868 were temporary residents. The statistics indicated an overwhelmingly Armenian population in the city of Kars, with sizeable Asiatic Christian, Russian, and Sunni Muslim minorities, however, in the rest of the okrug, Armenians formed the plurality of the population, being closely followed by Sunni Muslim, Roma, Shia Muslim, Russian, Kurdish and Yazidi minorities:
| Nationality | Urban | Rural | TOTAL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | ||
| Armenians | 25,665 | 84.11 | 55,087 | 34.12 | 80,752 | 42.06 | |
| Sunni Muslims | 1,210 | 3.97 | 31,355 | 19.42 | 32,565 | 16.96 | |
| Roma | 0 | 0.00 | 23,504 | 14.56 | 23,504 | 12.24 | |
| Shia Muslims | 260 | 0.85 | 17,965 | 11.13 | 18,225 | 9.49 | |
| Russians | 1,487 | 4.87 | 14,493 | 8.98 | 15,980 | 8.32 | |
| Kurds | 38 | 0.12 | 10,873 | 6.73 | 10,911 | 5.68 | |
| Yazidis | 0 | 0.00 | 5,123 | 3.17 | 5,123 | 2.67 | |
| Asiatic Christians | 1,779 | 5.83 | 1,350 | 0.84 | 3,129 | 1.63 | |
| North Caucasians | 0 | 0.00 | 869 | 0.54 | 869 | 0.45 | |
| Other Europeans | 49 | 0.16 | 733 | 0.45 | 782 | 0.41 | |
| Georgians | 1 | 0.00 | 104 | 0.06 | 105 | 0.05 | |
| Jews | 25 | 0.08 | 0 | 0.00 | 25 | 0.01 | |
| TOTAL | 30,514 | 100.00 | 161,456 | 100.00 | 191,970 | 100.00 | |