Artvin is a city in northeastern Turkey about 30 km inland from the Black Sea. It is located on a hill overlooking the Çoruh River near the Deriner Dam, it is the home of Artvin Çoruh University. The area has a rich history but has not been studied extensively by archaeologists in recent decades. Artifacts dating back to the Bronze Age and earlier have been found; the area was part of the kingdom of Colchis but was always vulnerable to invasions, first the Scythians from across the Caucasus the Muslim armies led by Habib, son of Caliph Uthman who controlled the area from 853 AD to 1023 when it was conquered by the Byzantines from the Sac Emirate linked to the Abbasids. The Principalities of Tao-Klarjeti arose out of the turmoils of the Muslim conquests in the Caucasus in the 7th and 8th centuries, succeeding the early medieval Kingdom of Iberia and latter leading unification of Georgian Kingdom. For a long time the region became a cultural safe-house and one of the most important religious centers of Georgia.
The Seljuk Turks of Alp Arslan conquered the area in 1064 AD. But in 1081 Turkish forces led by Saltukoğlu Beylik managed to take it back with the aid of Melikşah. With the collapse of the Seljuks, the Artvin area came under the control of the Ildeniz tribe of the Anatolian Turkish beyliks. Kingdom of Georgia regained control over the region through Georgian-Seljuk wars. Taking advantage of Georgia's weakness through Mongol invasions, Turkmen incursions started to south-western Georgia; the Georgian population of the region called on lord of Samtskhe, to assist them against the Turkmens. By the mid-13th century, the Jaqelis realm thus incorporated most of the mountainous areas of north eastern Anatolia. Various Turkish clans fought for control over the area and this continued until the Safavids took advantage of this fighting and conquered the area in 1502; the Ottoman Empire under Mehmet II defeated the Empire of Trebizond to bring the eastern Black Sea coast and the mountainous hinterland under their control.
Subsequent expeditions into the mountains by Selim I and Mehmed Han Yusufeli gave them control of a number of castles and thus the whole district. Kara Ahmet Pasha, the vizer of Suleiman I formed the first Livane Sanjak with the name Pert-Eğekte. On 13 July 1551, with İskender Pasha's Ardanuç castle, the Ottoman control of Artvin was secure. Ahmed III's vizer Hasan Pasha founded the city of Batum in the newly acquired lands of Ajaria and it became the hub of the area; this lasted 250 years until the area was ceded to the Russians by the Ottoman Empire following the Russo-Turkish War, recovered and again ceded at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. Artvin was in a war zone and continuously changing control between Russia and Turkey with the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Kars. All this fighting and uncertainty between Russia and Turkey in the late 19th century caused the people of Artvin to suffer with much of the population moving westwards away from the Russian-controlled zones.
The Russians withdrew from Artvin following the Russian Revolution of 1917. As a result of Red Army invasion of Georgia, Artvin was ceded to newly established Turkey under the Treaty of Kars in 1921. Above the strategically placed town and road is the fortress, once within the medieval Georgian district of Nigali; the site consists of a single circuit wall surrounding the summit of the outcrop, several impressive rooms, an outwork protecting the south entrance, a large donjon at the west. There are embrasures and windows suitable for archers. In 1983 the fortress was surveyed and three years an accurate scaled plan and description were published. On 30 April 1850, the papal bulla Universi Dominici gregis from Pius IX established the Armenian Catholic eparchy of Artvin of the Armenians, with jurisdiction over the extreme northeast of Turkey and in the Transcaucasus, it has had only three incumbents: Timoteus Astargi Antonius Halagi Johannes Zakarian, never allowed to take possession of his see by the Czarist Russian Empire, which had taken control of the whole province of Artvin after the Russo-Turkish War Under an agreement between Russia and the Holy See in 1904, Catholic Armenians throughout the Caucasus and interior Russia were entrusted to an apostolic administrator resident in Tbilisi, but the Soviet authorities imprisoned him, he died some time before 1937.
The diocese had lost most of its faithful in the Armenian Genocide at the end of the First World War. The Holy See continued to list the eparchy of Artvin as a vacant residential see until 1971, but in 1972, suppressing it as such, began to list Artvin as the Armenian Catholic titular bishopric of Artvin / Artwin / Artuinen Armenorum; however it never has had a titular incumbent. In the census of 1897, the town of Artvin was populated by Armenians, whose forebears came from the Mush and Van region, but the district in which it lay was Muslim. Outside of the town, the population in the district numbered 49,049 people, of whom 39,997 were Turks, 5,458 Georgian and 3,173 Armenian. Artvin or Livana castle, built in
Qvirila River is a river of Georgia. It runs for 152 kilometres, it is a left affluent of the Rioni River
The Alazani is a river that flows through the Caucasus. It is the main tributary of the Kura in eastern Georgia, flows for 351 kilometres. Part of its path forms the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan, before it meets the Kura at the Mingəçevir Reservoir; the river is the same as that referred to by classical authors Strabo and Pliny as "Alazonius" or "Alazon", may be the Abas River mentioned by Plutarch and Dio Cassius as the location of the Battle of the Abas. The Alazani originates in the Greater Caucasus, south of the main ridge, in the northwestern part of the Akhmeta District, it flows to the south towards the town Akhmeta through the fruitful Alazani Valley of Kakheti towards the southeast. The Alazani is the center of the Georgian wine industry. For centuries, it was a main gateway for Persian invaders; the Alazani dries up during the winter, but in the late spring, snow melt from the mountains swells the river enormously. The river is used for irrigation and for drinking water. In the 1990s, Chinese investors built many small hydroelectric power plants, which use the Alazani's strong current.
The river is popular with tourists for rafting trips. A light pollution of the river with biological substances comes from untreated sewage from the cities and other communities, as well as from the agricultural areas. In the districts of Kvareli and Lagodekhi, water quality is said to be quite bad. Alazani serves as the name of different Georgian wines, among them the semi-dry brands of Marani Alazani Valley and Old Tbilisi Alazani. Alazani Floodplain Forests Natural Monument Alazani at GEOnet Names Server
Turkey the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Bulgaria to its northwest. Istanbul is the largest city. 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority. At various points in its history, the region has been inhabited by diverse civilizations including the Assyrians, Thracians, Phrygians and Armenians. Hellenization continued into the Byzantine era; the Seljuk Turks began migrating into the area in the 11th century, their victory over the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 symbolizes the start and foundation of Turkey. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, when it disintegrated into small Turkish principalities. Beginning in the late 13th-century, the Ottomans started uniting these Turkish principalities.
After Mehmed II conquered Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman expansion continued under Selim I. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent the Ottoman Empire encompassed much of Southeast Europe, West Asia and North Africa and became a world power. In the following centuries the state entered a period of decline with a gradual loss of territories and wars. In an effort to consolidate the weakening social and political foundations of the empire, Mahmut II started a period of modernisation in the early 19th century, bringing reforms in all areas of the state including the military and bureaucracy along with the emancipation of all citizens. In 1913, a coup d'état put the country under the control of the Three Pashas. During World War I, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian and Pontic Greek subjects. Following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states; the Turkish War of Independence, initiated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his colleagues against occupying Allied Powers, resulted in the abolition of monarchy in 1922 and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, with Atatürk as its first president.
Atatürk enacted numerous reforms, many of which incorporated various aspects of Western thought and customs into the new form of Turkish government. The Kurdish–Turkish conflict, an armed conflict between the Republic of Turkey and Kurdish insurgents, has been active since 1984 in the southeast of the country. Various Kurdish groups demand separation from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan or to have autonomy and greater political and cultural rights for Kurds in Turkey. Turkey is a charter member of the UN, an early member of NATO, the IMF and the World Bank, a founding member of the OECD, OSCE, BSEC, OIC and G-20. After becoming one of the first members of the Council of Europe in 1949, Turkey became an associate member of the EEC in 1963, joined the EU Customs Union in 1995 and started accession negotiations with the European Union in 2005 which have been stopped by the EU in 2017 due to "Turkey's path toward autocratic rule". Turkey's economy and diplomatic initiatives led to its recognition as a regional power while its location has given it geopolitical and strategic importance throughout history.
Turkey is a secular, unitary parliamentary republic which adopted a presidential system with a referendum in 2017. Turkey's current administration headed by president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the AKP has enacted measures to increase the influence of Islam, undermine Kemalist policies and freedom of the press; the English name of Turkey means "land of the Turks". Middle English usage of Turkye is evidenced in an early work by Chaucer called The Book of the Duchess; the phrase land of Torke is used in the 15th-century Digby Mysteries. Usages can be found in the Dunbar poems, the 16th century Manipulus Vocabulorum and Francis Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum; the modern spelling "Turkey" dates back to at least 1719. The Turkish name Türkiye was adopted in 1923 under the influence of European usage; the Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world. Various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period.
Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. In fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated; the European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has been inhabited since at least forty thousand years ago, is known to have been in the Neolithic era by about 6000 BC. Göbekli Tepe is the site of the oldest known man-made religious structure, a temple dating to circa 10,000 BC, while Çatalhöyük is a large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately
A river mouth is the part of a river where the river debouches into another river, a lake, a reservoir, a sea, or an ocean. The water from a river can enter the receiving body in a variety of different ways; the motion of a river is influenced by the relative density of the river compared to the receiving water, the rotation of the earth, any ambient motion in the receiving water, such as tides or seiches. If the river water has a higher density than the surface of the receiving water, the river water will plunge below the surface; the river water will either form an underflow or an interflow within the lake. However, if the river water is lighter than the receiving water, as is the case when fresh river water flows into the sea, the river water will float along the surface of the receiving water as an overflow. Alongside these advective transports, inflowing water will diffuse. At the mouth of a river, the change in flow condition can cause the river to drop any sediment it is carrying; this sediment deposition can generate a variety of landforms, such as deltas, sand bars and tie channels.
Many places in the United Kingdom take their names from their positions at the mouths of rivers, such as Plymouth and Great Yarmouth. Confluence River delta Estuary Liman
The Terek River, a major river in the Northern Caucasus, flows through South Ossetia and Russia into the Caspian Sea. It rises in South Ossetia near the juncture of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range and the Khokh Range, to the southwest of Mount Kazbek, winding north in a white torrent between the town of Stepantsminda and the village of Gergeti toward the Russian region North Ossetia and the city of Vladikavkaz, it turns east to flow through Chechnya and Dagestan before dividing into two branches which empty into the Caspian Sea. Below the city of Kizlyar it forms a swampy river delta around 100 kilometres wide; the river is a key natural asset in the region, providing irrigation and hydroelectric power in its upper reaches. The main cities on the Terek include Vladikavkaz and Kizlyar. Several minor hydroelectric power stations dam the Terek: Dzau electrostation and Pavlodolskaya. Construction has started of the Dariali Hydropower Plant, with a planned installed capacity of 108 MW, on the territory of Kazbegi municipality near the Russia–Georgia border.
Leo Tolstoy's novel The Cossacks is set amongst its Cossacks. The Terek drains most of the northeast Caucasus east into the Caspian just as its sister, the Kuban River, drains the northwest Caucasus west into the Black Sea, its major tributaries are the following. In the west a fan of rivers flows northeast into the Terek; these are the east-flowing Malka River, the Baksan River, the Chergem River and the Cherek River with its two branches. These three join the Malka; the Liashen, Urukh River and Duradon flow northeast, the Ardon River and its branch, the Fiagdon River flow north and the Gizeldon River drains the north slope of Mount Kazbek and reaches the Ardon near its mouth. There is the north-flowing part of the Terek with the Darial Pass; the great northwest bend of the Terek is cut off by the northeast-flowing Sunzha River which catches most of the north-flowing rivers. These are the Assa River, the Argun and Khukhulau. East of these are the Aksay River and the Aktash River which dried up in the lowlands between the Sulak and the Terek.
In the east the Sulak River drains most of interior Dagestan and turns east to the Caspian before it reaches the Terek. The capital of Khazaria, may have stood on the banks of the river Terek; the Terek river was the site of the final defeat of the army of Hulagu, khan of the Ilkhanate, at the hands of the army of Berke, khan of the Golden Horde, led by Berke's nephew, Nogai Khan, in the first civil war of the Mongol Empire, the Berke–Hulagu war of 1262. On the river Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in 1395; the Terek Cossack Host had its base in the Terek basin. During the Russian conquest of the Caucasus it was part of the North Caucasus Line. During World War II, German forces at the end of August 1942 reached the Terek near Mozdok – the farthest extent of German conquests in the Soviet Union – but aside from a small bridgehead were unable to forge further toward the oil fields of Baku, Hitler's objective. Terek Cossacks
Kura (Caspian Sea)
The Kura is an east-flowing river south of the Greater Caucasus Mountains which drains the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus east into the Caspian Sea. It drains the north side of the Lesser Caucasus while its main tributary, the Aras drains the south side of those mountains. Starting in northeastern Turkey, it flows through Turkey to Georgia to Azerbaijan, where it receives the Aras as a right tributary, enters the Caspian Sea at Neftçala; the total length of the river is 1,515 kilometres. People have inhabited the Caucasus region for thousands of years, first established agriculture in the Kura Valley over 4,500 years ago. Large, complex civilizations grew up on the river, but by 1200 CE, most were reduced to ruin by natural disasters and foreign invaders; the increasing human use, eventual damage, of the watershed’s forests and grasslands contributed to a rising intensity of floods through the 20th century. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union started building many canals on the river. Navigable up to Tbilisi in Georgia, it is now much slower and shallower, as it has been harnessed by irrigation projects and hydroelectric power stations.
The river is now moderately polluted by major industrial centers like Tbilisi and Rustavi in Georgia. The name Kura is related to the name of Cyrus the Great, emperor of Persia, The Georgian name of Kura is Mt'k'vari, either from Georgian "good water" or a Georgianized form of Megrelian tkvar-ua "gnaw"; the name Kura was adopted first by the Russians and by European cartographers. In some definitions of Europe, the Kura River defines the borderline between Asia; the river should not be confused with the Kura River, Russia, a westward flowing tributary of the Malka River in Stavropol Krai. It rises in northeastern Turkey in a small valley in the Kars Upland of the Lesser Caucasus, it flows west north and east past Ardahan, crosses into Georgia. It arcs to the northwest into a canyon near Akhaltsikhe where it starts to run northeast in a gorge for about 75 kilometres, spilling out of the mountains near Khashuri, it arcs east and starts to flow east-southeast for about 120 kilometres, past Gori near Mtskheta, flows south through a short canyon and along the west side of T'bilisi, the largest city in the region.
The river flows steeply southeast past Rustavi and turns eastward at the confluence with the Khrami River, crossing the Georgia-Azerbaijan line and flowing across grasslands into Shemkir reservoir and Yenikend reservoir. The Kura empties into Mingachevir reservoir, the largest body of water in Azerbaijan, formed by a dam near its namesake town at the southeastern end; the Iori and Alazani rivers joined the Kura, but their mouths are now submerged under the lake. After leaving the dam the river meanders southeast where it meets its biggest tributary Tartarchay in Barda rayon and continues across a broad irrigated plain for several hundred kilometers, turning east near Lake Sarysu, shortly after, receives the Aras, the largest tributary, at the city of Sabirabad. At the Aras confluence it makes a large arc to the north and flows due south for about 60 kilometres, passing the west side of Shirvan National Park, before turning east and emptying into the Caspian Sea at Neftçala. Most of the Kura River runs in the broad and deep valley between the Greater Caucasus and Lesser Caucasus mountains, the major tributary, the Aras, drains most of the southern Caucasus and the mountain ranges of the extreme northern Middle East.
The entirety of Armenia and most of Azerbaijan are drained by the Kura River, but the Kura does not pass through Armenia at all. In the Kura watershed are Turkey, a bit of northern Iran. Most of the elevation change in the river occurs within the first 200 kilometres. While the river starts at 2,740 metres above sea level, the elevation is 693 metres by the time it reaches Khashuri in central Georgia, just out of the mountains, only 291 metres when it reaches Azerbaijan; the lower part of the river flows through the Kura-Aras Lowland, which covers most of central Azerbaijan and abuts the Caspian Sea. The Kura is the third largest, of the rivers that flow into the Caspian, its delta is the fourth largest among the rivers that flow into the Caspian Sea, is divided into three main sections, or "sleeves", composed of sediment the river deposited during different periods of time. Before 1998, the river flowed all the way to the tip of the delta, where it discharged into the Caspian. In that year, the river escaped its channel and started to flow off to the west, leaving the last few kilometers abandoned.
The course change is believed to be the result of a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea coupled with a major flood of the Kura. About 174 kilometres of the river is in Turkey, 435 kilometres in Georgia, 906 kilometres in Azerbaijan. About 5,500 square kilometres of the catchment is in Turkey, 29,743 square kilometres in Armenia, 46,237 square kilometres in Georgia, 56,290 square kilometres in Azerbaijan, about 63,500 square kilometres are in Iran. At the confluence with the Aras River, the drainage area of the tributary is larger than the Kura by about 4%, it is longer. However, because of the more arid conditions and int