Artvin

i.The Çoruh Valley

Artvin occupies the far northeastern corner of Türkiye, in the deep valley of the Çoruh river (the ancient Boas), which rises near Bayburt in the Pontic mountains and runs north-east through one of the most spectacular river canyons in Türkiye before emptying into the Black Sea at Batumi, just over the Georgian frontier. The province is small (about 7,393 km²) and sparsely populated (around 167,000 people), but it sits at one of the most strategic Caucasian junctions in the country: directly above the Black Sea coast at Hopa, on the Georgian border, with the great river valley running south toward Erzurum and the historic Anatolian interior. The city of Artvin itself, at approximately 525 metres, occupies a steep south-facing slope above the river, with the wider district falling and rising through the Çoruh's deeply incised canyon.

The provincial economy and identity rest on the river and the mountains. The Çoruh basin carries dense forests of beech, spruce, and chestnut on its lower slopes; high alpine pastures (yaylas) above the tree line; and one of the world's premier whitewater rafting environments, the river falling more than 1,400 metres over its run from the upper basin to the Black Sea. The provincial population includes a distinctive mix of Georgian-, Laz-, Hemşin-, and Turkish-speaking communities, each with their own villages, dialects, and cultural traditions. The annual Kafkasör Festival in June, with its traditional bull-wrestling matches in the high pasture above Artvin city, is one of the most distinctive folk events in eastern Türkiye.

A small Caucasian-frontier province on the Çoruh — passed through every dominion that has touched the eastern Black Sea coast, and returned to Türkiye in 1921 by the diplomacy that closed the eastern front of the War of Independence.

ii.Colchis and the Iron Age Layers

The deepest written record of the Artvin country places it within the ancient region the Greeks called Colchis (Kolkhis) — the country at the eastern end of the Black Sea that holds, in Greek myth, the destination of the Argonauts and the resting-place of the Golden Fleece. In the 4th century BCE the Athenian historian Xenophon, in his Anabasis, records the peoples his Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries encountered as they marched through the country: the Kolkhi (Colchians), the Makaroni, and the Taokhi. From the 9th century BCE onward the region had been within the dominion of the Urartian state centred at Van.

In the 1st century BCE the 1st-century-BCE geographer Strabo records that the Çoruh basin was seized by Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus and added to the Pontic Kingdom. After the Roman general Pompey defeated Mithridates in 63 BCE, the Romans did not directly govern the upper Çoruh; the country was left under the dominion of local Caucasian kings. Roman administration was never deeply effective in Artvin. Byzantine authority was established from the early 5th century CE, when the region was placed within the Khaldia Theme (the great northeastern Pontic military district, mentioned in the 9th-century Abbasid geographers Ibn Khurradādhbih and Qudāma b. Ja'far in the forms Haldiye and Hâlidiyât).

iii.Livane Castle (939 CE) and the Coming of Islam

The Artvin region was first incorporated into Islamic territory in 646 CE, in the time of the Caliph Uthman (Hz. Osman). For the next three centuries the country changed hands repeatedly between Byzantine and Islamic forces on the long northeastern frontier. During these centuries of contestation, in 939 CE, the Byzantines built Livane Castle on the cliff above the Çoruh as a watchpost against the raids of Muslim armies pushing up from the south. Livane Castle is the kernel of the modern city of Artvin: the medieval Turkish settlement, the Ottoman quarters, and the modern administrative centre all grew up around the castle on its commanding cliff position.

Seljuk dominion in Artvin began to be established from 1068 onward, in the period leading up to and immediately after the Battle of Manzikert (1071). The region passed briefly into Georgian hands, then returned to Seljuk control. Under the Seljuks, Artvin was administered as a frontier beylik (uç beyliği) under the Atabegs of Azerbaijan. After the Mongol and Ilkhanid invasions of the 13th century, the upper Çoruh was reached in the 15th century by the Aq Qoyunlu Karayülük Osman Bey; the founding Aq Qoyunlu sovereign Uzun Hasan consolidated Aq Qoyunlu dominion over the country, though the local Atabegs continued their administration on the ground.

iv.The Ottoman Conquest and the Livane Sancak

The Ottoman incorporation of Artvin was a multi-stage process. When the region was subjected to a Georgian invasion in the early 16th century, the beys of Artvin appealed for help to Şehzade Selim (the future Selim I "the Stern" / Yavuz Sultan Selim), then governor of Trabzon. With Ottoman support the Georgians were driven out, and the Artvin region passed under semi-formal Ottoman protection. During the 1536–1537 campaign of the Erzurum Beylerbeyi Dulkadirli Mehmed Han under Süleyman the Magnificent, the Livane Sancak — comprising Artvin and Yusufeli — was formally founded and attached to the Erzurum Beylerbeylik. The sancak was lost shortly afterward but retaken in 1549 through the efforts of the Second Vizier Ahmed Paşa. With the formation of the Çıldır Eyalet in 1579 (after the great Ottoman victories of the 1578 Çıldır campaign), Artvin became the centre of the Livane Sancak attached to that eyalet, and remained so for the next two and a half centuries.

v.The Russian Occupations of 1828 and 1878–1918

The Russian advance into the Caucasus in the early 19th century brought Artvin within reach of Tsarist forces for the first time. After the Russian occupation of June 1828 and the subsequent Treaty of Edirne (1829) — which ceded Akhaltsikhe (Ahıska) to Russia — the broader administrative organisation of the Çıldır Eyalet was disrupted, and Artvin was reorganised as the Livane Kaza attached to the Batum Sancak of the Trabzon Eyalet.

The longer Russian occupation followed the disastrous 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War. By Article 58 of the Treaty of Berlin (13 July 1878) — implementing the broader terms of the earlier Treaty of San Stefano (3 March 1878) — Artvin, together with Kars and Ardahan, was ceded to the Russian Empire as the so-called Elviye-i Selâse ("Three Provinces") in payment of Ottoman war reparations. For the next forty years, from 1878 to 1918, Artvin was Russian territory, administered within the Kars Oblast of the imperial Caucasian administration.

One distinctive demographic consequence of the Russian cession: under Article 7 of the Definitive Treaty (Muâhede-i Kat'iyye) of 8 February 1879, the inhabitants of the ceded territories were given three years to emigrate freely. A substantial number of Artvinli families took the opportunity, dispersing across Anatolia and settling particularly in the sparsely-populated northern villages of the Kocaeli peninsula south-east of Istanbul. The Kocaeli Artvinli villages — preserving Artvin dialect, foodways, and family memory across the intervening century and a half — remain a distinctive thread in the demographic geography of north-western Türkiye.

vi.The 1914 Melo Battalion and the 1921 Return

Through the long Russian occupation, the local population was organised within the framework of the late-Ottoman Teşkîlât-ı Mahsûsa (Special Organisation) and mounted intermittent resistance against the Russians. The most dramatic episode came in November 1914: the Melo Border Battalion — under the command of Captain İsmâil Hakkı Bey, taking its name from the village of Melo (Sarıbudak) — routed Russian units in and around Artvin city, and the Russians were briefly forced to evacuate. On 2 November 1914, Artvin was liberated. The recovery lasted only about four months; the Russians retook the city in the spring of 1915 and held it until the collapse of the Russian war effort.

The Erzincan Armistice with the new Soviet authorities (18 December 1917) and the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) returned Artvin to the Ottoman state in March 1918. But this recovery was again temporary. Under the Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918), Ottoman forces had to withdraw behind the pre-1914 frontiers; on 17 December 1918 Artvin was occupied by British forces, which held the city until April 1920. The British, on withdrawal, transferred Artvin to the briefly-independent Democratic Republic of Georgia.

The definitive return to Turkish administration came through the diplomatic and military successes of the early Government of the Grand National Assembly. After Kâzım Karabekir Paşa's 15th Corps liberated Kars on 30 October 1920 — the new Turkish state's first military victory — the new Ankara government turned to Artvin. An ultimatum to the Georgian government on 22 February 1921 threatened occupation; the Georgian government's reply of 23 February 1921 conceded both Ardahan and Artvin; on 27 February 1921 Artvin was definitively reincorporated into Turkish territory. The Treaty of Moscow of 16 March 1921 formalised the new Turkish–Soviet frontier on its modern lines.

vii.Republican Reorganisations and the Renaming of 1956

The post-1921 administrative organisation of Artvin went through four successive reorganisations across thirty-five years. By Law no. 133 of 7 July 1921, the Artvin Sancak was founded. In 1924, with the broader Republican conversion of sancaks to vilayets, Artvin became the centre of the Artvin Vilayet. In 1933 (Law no. 2917 of 1 June 1933), the Artvin Vilayet was abolished and Artvin became a kaza of the new Çoruh Vilayet centred at Rize. In 1936 (Law no. 2885 of 4 January 1936), a new Çoruh Vilayet was created centred at Artvin. Finally, in 1956 (Law no. 6668 of 17 February 1956), the name "Çoruh" was removed and the province was renamed Artvin Vilayet — its modern name.

viii.The Çoruh Dams and Modern Artvin

The single most consequential 20th- and 21st-century intervention in the Artvin landscape has been the construction of the Çoruh hydroelectric dam cascade. The Çoruh's steep gradient and consistent flow made it one of the most heavily developed hydroelectric rivers in Türkiye; through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s a series of major dams — Borçka Dam, Deriner Dam (at 249 metres, one of the tallest dams in the world), Muratlı Dam, and the Artvin Dam immediately upstream of the city — were built along the Çoruh and its tributaries. The dam construction has produced major changes in the lower Çoruh valley: villages submerged, the historic Artvin–Borçka road replaced by a higher route, the river itself transformed from a free-flowing torrent into a series of reservoirs, and a substantial loss to the rafting and natural-river economy. The trade-off — significant electrical generation, employment, and infrastructure — remains contested among the province's environmental and cultural communities.

The major districts of the province each carry their own character: Borçka in the lower Çoruh valley, near the Karagöl-Sahara National Park; Hopa on the Black Sea coast, the principal Turkish port for trade with Georgia and the south Caucasus; Şavşat in the high pastoral country toward Ardahan; Yusufeli in the upper Çoruh valley, partly submerged by the Yusufeli Dam (completed 2022) and rebuilt at a new site upstream; and Murgul, the historic copper-mining centre. The Karagöl-Sahara National Park in the Şavşat district, with its montane forests and the volcanic crater lake of Karagöl, is one of the great natural attractions of the eastern Black Sea coast.

ix.Visiting Artvin Today

Artvin is reached by long-distance bus from Trabzon (four hours along the coast and up the Çoruh valley) or Erzurum (five hours over the mountains). The provincial airport at Hopa serves limited domestic flights. The land border with Georgia at Sarp (in the Hopa district) is the principal Turkish overland crossing to Batumi and the wider south Caucasus, and is one of the busiest land borders in Türkiye.

A weekend is sensible: a day in Artvin city (the Livane Castle, the modern terraced quarters, the Çoruh embankment); a day for the Karagöl-Sahara National Park and the Şavşat country, ideally combined with the historic Cevizli Köprü stone bridge and the surviving Georgian-period churches (the medieval Bagratid-era churches at Dolishane, Opiza, and Tbeti, scattered through the upper Çoruh basin). Travellers with more time should add the Black Sea coast at Hopa and the Borçka–Camili biosphere reserve.

The Artvin table is the eastern Black Sea coast at its most distinct: muhlama (mıhlama) (the Black Sea cornmeal-and-cheese dish), laz böreği (the Laz layered pastry), the famous Artvin balı (Artvin honey — registered as a Geographic Indication for the chestnut and forest honeys of the upper Çoruh), and the great river trout of the upper Çoruh basin. For the broader Black Sea table, see Anatolian Tables; for recipes, our sister site TurkishCooking.com.