History
In 680 BC Scythians came across the Caucasus from the north and captured this area from the Urartu Kings that ruled from their capital on the shores of Lake Van to the south. The Scythians were replaced by Persians and then in 330(?) BC Alexander the Great came through with his armies. Ethnic Georgians populated the area, and in between conquests, it was a province of a Georgian Kingdom after whose paritition in the 1490s the area passed to the atabegs of Samtskhe based in Akhaltsikhe until it was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1578.
In 1878, after the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), the region was included into the Russian Empire, and until 1918 was known as Kars Oblast. Part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia from 1918 to 1921, Ardahan was reclaimed by Turkey under the Treaty of Kars in 1921.
The construction of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline gave the local economy a brief boost from 2000 onwards.
Read more about this topic: Ardahan Province
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