According to the memories of Nikita Khrushchev, the deputy premier Lavrentiy Beria pressed Joseph Stalin to claim eastern Anatolian territory that had supposedly been stolen from Georgia by the Turks. [1] For practical reasons, the Soviet claims, if successful, would have strengthened the state's position around the Black Sea and would weaken British influence in the Middle East. [1]
The Soviet Union had long objected to the Montreux Convention of 1936 which gave Turkey sole control over shipping between the Bosphorus strait, an essential waterway for Russian exports. When the 1925 Soviet-Turkish Treaty of Friendship and Neutrality expired in 1945, the Soviet side chose not to renew the treaty. The Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov told the Turks that Georgian and Armenian claims to Turkish-controlled territory would have to be resolved before the conclusion of a new treaty. [2]
The disputed territory around Kars and Ardahan was governed by the Russian Empire from 1878 to 1921, when it was ceded to Turkey by Russia but continued to be inhabited by members of the respective ethnicities who now had titular Soviet Socialist Republics. Molotov argued that while the Soviets normalized their border with Poland since territorial cessions to the country during Soviet weakness in 1921, similar cessions to Turkey were never legitimized by renegotiation since that time. [2]
In 1945, 14–20 December, central Georgian and Russian newspapers: Communist, Zarya Vostoka, Pravda and Izvestia , published letter on our legitimate claim against Turkey written by academics Simon Janashia and Niko Berdzenishvili. [3] the publication says:
After successful libratory war, victorious democracy is now preparing to fight for peace and prosperity, freedom loving people want to take their rightful place. Georgian people. people who gave ultimate sacrifice in a fight against fascism. These people have earned the right to submit its rightful demands. We appeal to the world public opinion, about ancient lands Turkey has seized from us. This is not only insignificant territorial harassment, but also crime against our people's identity. crime that has slashed our national body in half. This is about land, that was cause of millennium long struggle our people have endured. This note ends with a demand: Georgian people should receive their homeland back. Land that they never abandoned and cannot abandon.
The last section of the report was devoted to Lazistan, or Chanetia. Borders of this territory start from the borders of the Batumi province and further to the west along the Black Sea coast to Termedon River near the town of Terme. This territory occupies approximately 20,000 km2. and embraces the capes of Rize, Trabzon, Fici, and Fener. Note that medieval wars with Byzantium and events of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries found their parallel in the report. Finally, the report implied that "Georgian SSR, besides the southern sector of the former Batumi district and former Artvin, Ardahan and Olti districts, could lay claim to its historical provinces, including Parhal, Tortom and İspir (South-Western Metskhetia) and the East Chanetia (region of Rize) and the Central Chanetia (region of Trebizond). [4]
There were three Soviet plans concerning the amount of territory that Turkey should cede:
The Soviet government wanted to repatriate those from the Armenian diaspora in the acquired territories, since in three years (1946–1948) after the World War II about 150,000 ethnic Armenians (Western Armenians and their descendants) from Syria, Lebanon, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, and France had migrated to Soviet Armenia.[ citation needed ]
Strategically, the United States opposed Soviet annexation of the Kars Plateau for its necessity to defend Turkey. Ideologically, certain elements in the American government saw the Soviet territorial claims as expansionist and reminiscent of Nazi irredentism over the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. Since 1934, the State Department had concluded that its earlier support for Armenia since President Wilson (1913-1921) had expired since the loss of Armenian independence. [1]
The United States' firm opposition to Soviet-backed separatist movements in Turkey and Persia led to the crushing and re-annexation of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad (1946–1947) and Azeri Azerbaijan People's Government (1945–1946) by Persia. [1] Turkey joined the anti-Soviet military alliance NATO in 1952. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet government renounced its territorial claims on Turkey, as part of an effort to promote friendly relations with the transcontinental country and its alliance partner, the United States. [6]
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ArSSR), also known as Soviet Armenia, or simply Armenia, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union, located in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Soviet Armenia bordered the Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia and the independent states of Iran and Turkey. The capital of the republic was Yerevan and it contained thirty-seven districts (raions). Other major cities in the ArmSSR included Leninakan, Kirovakan, Hrazdan, Etchmiadzin, and Kapan. The republic was governed by Communist Party of Armenia, a republican branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The Democratic Republic of Georgia was the first modern establishment of a republic of Georgia, which existed from May 1918 to February 1921. Recognized by all major European powers of the time, DRG was created in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which led to the collapse of the Russian Empire and allowed territories formerly under Russia's rule to assert independence. In contrast to Bolshevik Russia, DRG was governed by a moderate, multi-party political system led by the Georgian Social Democratic Party (Mensheviks).
Kars is a city in northeast Turkey. It is the seat of Kars Province and Kars District. As of 2022, its population was 91,450. Kars, in classical historiography (Strabo), was in the ancient region known as Chorzene, part of the province of Ayrarat in the Kingdom of Armenia, and later the capital of the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia from 929 to 961. Currently, the mayor of Kars is Türker Öksüz. The city had an Armenian ethnic majority until it was re-captured by Turkish nationalist forces in late 1920.
Rize is a coastal city in the eastern part of the Black Sea Region of Turkey. It is the seat of Rize Province and Rize District. Its population is 119,828 (2021). Rize is a typical Turkish provincial capital with little in the way of nightlife or entertainment. Since the border with Georgia was opened in the early 1990s, the Black Sea coast road has been widened and the town is much wealthier than it used to be. Current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's family has its roots in Rize and the local university is named after him. The city is linked by road with Trabzon, Hopa (55 miles [88 km] east on the Georgian border, and Erzurum. Rize–Artvin Airport started operating in 2022.
Lazistan was the Ottoman administrative name for the sanjak, under Trebizond Vilayet, comprising the Laz or Lazuri-speaking population on the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. It covered modern day land of contemporary Rize Province and the littoral of contemporary Artvin Province.
The Treaty of Kars was a treaty that established the borders between Turkey and the three Transcaucasian Soviet republics, which are now the independent republics of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The treaty was signed in the city of Kars on 13 October 1921.
The Turkish–Armenian War, known in Turkey as the Eastern Front of the Turkish War of Independence, was a conflict between the First Republic of Armenia and the Turkish National Movement following the collapse of the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920. After the provisional government of Ahmet Tevfik Pasha failed to win support for ratification of the treaty, remnants of the Ottoman Army's XV Corps under the command of Kâzım Karabekir attacked Armenian forces controlling the area surrounding Kars, eventually recapturing most of the territory in the South Caucasus that had been part of the Ottoman Empire prior to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and was subsequently ceded by Soviet Russia as part of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Wilsonian Armenia was the unimplemented boundary configuration of the First Republic of Armenia in the Treaty of Sèvres, as drawn by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Department of State. The Treaty of Sèvres was a peace treaty that had been drafted and signed between the Western Allied Powers and the defeated government of the Ottoman Empire in August 1920, but it was never ratified and was subsequently superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne. The proposed boundaries of Wilsonian Armenia incorporated portions of the Ottoman vilayets of Erzurum, Bitlis, Van, and Trabzon, which had Armenian populations of varying sizes. The inclusion of portions of Trabzon Vilayet was intended to provide the First Republic of Armenia with an outlet to the Black Sea at the port of Trabzon. A proposed Republic of Pontus was discussed at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but the Greek government of Eleftherios Venizelos feared the precarious position of such a state, so a portion of it was instead included in the proposed state of Wilsonian Armenia.
The Treaty of Alexandropol was a peace treaty between the First Republic of Armenia and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The treaty ended the Turkish-Armenian War that had begun on 12 September 1920, with the Turkish invasion of Western Armenia.
The Laz people, or Lazi, are a Kartvelian ethnic group native to the South Caucasus, who mainly live in Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. They traditionally speak the Laz language but have experienced a rapid language shift to Turkish.
The Provisional National Government of the Southwestern Caucasus, Provisional National Government of South West Caucasia or Kars Republic was a short-lived nominally-independent provisional government based in Kars, northeastern Turkey. Born in the wake of the Armistice of Mudros that ended World War I in the Middle East, it existed from December 1, 1918 until April 19, 1919, when it was abolished by British High Commissioner Admiral Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe. A similar provisional government named Igdir National Government was also founded on Iğdır.
The partition of the Ottoman Empire was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Constantinople by British, French, and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany to form the Ottoman–German alliance. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states. The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural, and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.
United Armenia, also known as Greater Armenia or Great Armenia, is an Armenian ethno-nationalist irredentist concept referring to areas within the traditional Armenian homeland—the Armenian Highland—which are currently or have historically been mostly populated by Armenians. The idea of what Armenians see as unification of their historical lands was prevalent throughout the 20th century and has been advocated by individuals, various organizations and institutions, including the nationalist parties Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Heritage, the ASALA and others.
Sergey or Sergo Kavtaradze was a Soviet politician and diplomat who briefly served as head of government in the Georgian SSR and as Deputy Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union. A Georgian Bolshevik activist, he was persecuted for his Trotskyist activities, but was pardoned and reinstated by his personal friend Joseph Stalin.
Batumi is the capital city of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia, located on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.
Soviet Union–Turkey relations were the diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Republic of Turkey.
The Turkish Straits crisis was a Cold War-era territorial conflict between the Soviet Union and Turkey. Turkey had remained officially neutral throughout most of the Second World War. After the war ended, Turkey was pressured by the Soviet government to institute joint military control of passage through the Turkish Straits, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. When the Turkish government refused, tensions in the region rose, leading to a Soviet show of force and demands for territorial concessions along the Georgia–Turkey border.
The Azerbaijan–Turkey border is a short 17 km (11 mi) long international border between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Turkey. The border is located at the southeastern tip of the Iğdır Province on the Turkish side and at the northwestern tip of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on the Azerbaijani side; running entirely along the Aras river, it is the shortest border for both countries.
The Georgia–Turkey border is 273 km in length and runs from the Black Sea coast in the west to the tripoint with Armenia in the east.
The Armenia–Turkey border is 311 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Georgia in the north to the tripoint with Azerbaijan in the south. The land border has been closed since 3 April 1993. The border has been protected by guards of the Russian Federal Security Service since 1992. On 9 May 2024, Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced that Russian border guards will continue to serve on Armenia's borders with Turkey and Iran, at Armenia's request. On 8 October 2024, Armenian prime minister's spokesperson Nazeli Baghdasaryan announced that the Armenian border guard troops will participate in protecting Armenia's borders with Turkey and Iran, together with the Russian border guard troops, starting from 1 January 2025. The border is set to reopen for diplomats and citizens of third countries in 2023.