Ardahan Province Ardahan ili
—  Province of Turkey  —
Location of Ardahan Province in Turkey
Country	Turkey
Region	Eastern Anatolia
Capital	Ardahan
Area
• Total	5,661 km2 (2,186 sq mi)
Population (2010-12-31)[1]
• Total	105,454
• Density	19/km2 (48/sq mi)
Area code(s)	0478
Vehicle registration	75
Website	ardahan.gov.tr

Ardahan Province (Turkish: Ardahan ili) is a province in the north-east of Turkey, at the very end of the country, where Turkey borders with Georgia. The provincial capital is the city of Ardahan.

Geography[link]

This is attractive open countryside which however spends many months of the year under snow. At this altitude temperatures on average reach -20°C and can drop below freezing all year round, including summer months.

The local economy depends on farming and raising livestock. Until 1993 Ardahan was a district of the province of Kars, becoming a province in its own right has meant more investment in infrastructure

There are two crossing points into the Samtskhe-Javakheti district of Georgia, one at Posof and the other (currently closed) at Çıldır. The Turkish military have a strong presence in this border district, another boost to the local economy.

Population[link]

Ardahan is an impoverished area that since the 1950s has seen a large number of its people migrate to other parts of Turkey or abroad. The population declined from 170,000 people in 1990 to 119,000 in 2000. The population is 105,454 as of 2010. Ethnic groups in the region include, Turkish people, Georgians, Kipchak^{[citation needed]}, Turkman^{[citation needed]}, Karapapaks^{[citation needed]} and Azeris^{[citation needed]}.

History[link]

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.

Districts[link]

Ardahan province is divided into 6 districts (capital district in bold):

• Ardahan
• Çıldır
• Damal
• Göle
• Hanak
• Posof

Cities and towns[link]

• Ardahan City 17,171 inh.
• Göle City 6,231 inh.
• Hanak City 4,030 inh.
• Damal City 3,804 inh.
• Köprülü Town 2,126 inh.
• Posof City 1,810 inh.
• Çıldır City 1,502 inh.

Places of interest[link]

• There are a number of medieval castles in the district including Ardahan Castle itself.
• At a certain time of the year Damal mountain throws a shadow that is a very lifelike silhouette of Atatürk. See.^[2]
• Lake Çıldır

See also[link]

• List of populated places in Ardahan Province

v t e Ardahan Province (in the Eastern Anatolia region) of Turkey Urban districts Ardahan Rural districts Çıldır - Damal - Göle - Hanak - Posof Regions Provinces Aegean Afyonkarahisar - Aydın - Denizli - Izmir - Kütahya - Manisa - Muğla - Uşak Black Sea Amasya - Artvin - Bartın - Bayburt - Bolu - Çorum - Düzce - Giresun - Gümüşhane - Karabük - Kastamonu - Ordu - Rize - Samsun - Sinop - Tokat - Trabzon - Zonguldak Central Anatolia Aksaray - Ankara - Çankırı - Eskişehir - Karaman - Kayseri - Kırıkkale - Kırşehir - Konya - Nevşehir - Niğde - Sivas - Yozgat Eastern Anatolia Ağrı - Ardahan -Bingöl - Bitlis - Elâzığ - Erzincan - Erzurum - Hakkâri - Iğdır - Kars - Malatya - Muş - Siirt - Tunceli - Van Marmara Balıkesir - Bilecik - Bursa - Çanakkale - Edirne - Istanbul - Kırklareli - Kocaeli - Sakarya - Tekirdağ - Yalova Mediterranean Adana - Antalya- Burdur - Hatay - Isparta - Kahramanmaraş - Mersin - Osmaniye Southeastern Anatolia Adıyaman - Batman - Diyarbakır - Gaziantep - Kilis - Mardin - Şanlıurfa - Şırnak

Coordinates: 41°06′47″N 42°49′15″E / 41.11306°N 42.82083°E / 41.11306; 42.82083

References[link]

v t e Provinces of Turkey Adana Adıyaman Afyonkarahisar Ağrı Aksaray Amasya Ankara Antalya Ardahan Artvin Aydın Balıkesir Bartın Batman Bayburt Bilecik Bingöl Bitlis Bolu Burdur Bursa Çanakkale Çankırı Çorum Denizli Diyarbakır Düzce Edirne Elazığ Erzincan Erzurum Eskişehir Gaziantep Giresun Gümüşhane Hakkâri Hatay Iğdır Isparta Istanbul İzmir Kahramanmaraş Karabük Karaman Kars Kastamonu Kayseri Kilis Kırıkkale Kırklareli Kırşehir Kocaeli Konya Kütahya Malatya Manisa Mardin Mersin Muğla Muş Nevşehir Niğde Ordu Osmaniye Rize Sakarya Samsun Şanlıurfa Siirt Sinop Şırnak Sivas Tekirdağ Tokat Trabzon Tunceli Uşak Van Yalova Yozgat Zonguldak

This article about an Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey location is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Laz people
ლაზი

Lazs People ca.1900s
Total population
202,000 (1970 est.)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Turkey: 200,000[1]  Georgia: 2,000[2]
Languages
Laz, Turkish, Georgian
Religion
Sunni Islam in Turkey, Orthodox Christians in Georgia[3]
Related ethnic groups
Mingrelians and other Georgians

The Laz (Lazi (ლაზი) or Lazepe (ლაზეფე) in Laz; Lazlar in Turkish; Lazi (ლაზი) or Č’ani (ჭანი) in Georgian) are an ethnic group native to the Black Sea coastal regions of Turkey and Georgia. One of the chief tribes of ancient kingdom of Colchis, the Laz were initially early adopters of Christianity, and most of them subsequently converted to Sunni Islam during Ottoman rule of Caucasus in the 16th century.

The Laz of Turkey form two principal groups. One of these is indigenous to the eastern Black Sea province formerly known as Lazistan (modern Rize and Artvin provinces). The other group fled the Russian expansion later in the 19th century and settled in Adapazarı, Sapanca, Yalova and Bursa, in western and eastern parts of the Black Sea and Marmara regions, respectively. The Laz speak the Laz language, related to Mingrelian, Georgian and Svan (Kartvelian languages).^[4] Laz identity in Georgia has largely merged with a Georgian identity and the meaning of "Laz" is seen as merely a regional category,^[5] and are mainly concentrated in Ajaria.

Laz were converted to Christianity while living under the Byzantine Empire and the Kingdom of Georgia. During the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the vast majority of Laz became Sunni Muslims of Hanafi madh'hab, and were ruled as part of the Lazistan sanjak.^{[citation needed]} There is also a very small number of Christian Laz in Georgia who were converted to Christianity from Islam.^[6]

History[link]

Kingdom of Lazica.

Part of a series on
Georgians ქართველები
The Kartvelian people
Nation
Georgia
Ancient Kartvelian people
Iberians · Colchians
Subgroups
Mingrelians · Svans · Adjarians · Khevsurians · Tushetians · Chveneburi
Culture
Music · Media · Sport · Calligraphy · Cinema · Cuisine · Dances · Costume · Calendar · Mythology · Architecture
Language
Alphabet · Dialects · Grammar
Religion
Georgian Orthodox Church Christianity · Catholicism Islam · Judaism Saint Nino · Saint George
Symbols
Borjgali · Cross of Bolnisi · Grapevine cross · Cross of Saint George
History of Georgia
v t e

The Laz people live in a geographic area which they refer to as Lazona (ლაზონა). Today, the entire area is part of the Republic of Turkey. Its history dates back to at least the 6th century B.C. when the first South Caucasian state in the west was the Kingdom of Colchis which covered modern western Georgia and modern Turkish provinces of Trabzon and Rize. Between the early 2nd century, B.C. and the late 2nd century A.D., the Kingdom of Colchis together with the neighbor countries, become an arena of long and devastating conflicts between major local powers Rome, Kingdom of Armenia and the short-lived Kingdom of Pontus. As a result of the brilliant Roman campaigns of generals Pompey and Lucullus, the Kingdom of Pontus was completely destroyed by the Romans and all its territory including Colchis, were incorporated into Roman Empire as her provinces.

The former Kingdom of Colchis was re-organized by the Romans into the province of Lazicum ruled by Roman legati. During Byzantine times, the word Colchi gave way to the term Laz. The Roman period was marked by further Hellenization of the region in terms of language, economy and culture. For example, since the early 3rd century, Greco-Latin Philosophical Academy of Phasis (present-day Poti) was quite famous all over the Roman Empire. In the early 3rd century, newly established Roman Lazicum was given certain degree of autonomy which by the end of the century developed into full the independence and formation of a new Kingdom of Lazica (covering the modern day regions of Mingrelia, Adjaria, Guria and Abkhazia) on the basis of smaller principalities of Zans, Svans, Apsilae and Sanigs. Kingdom of Lazica survived more than 250 years until in 562 AD it was absorbed by the Byzantine Empire. In the middle of the 4th century, Lazica adopted Christianity as her official religion. That event was preceded by the arrival of St. Simon the Canaanite (or Kananaios in Greek) who was preaching all over Lazica and met his death in Suaniri (Western Lazica). According to Moses of Chorene, the enemies of Christianity cut him in two halves with a saw.

The re-incorporation of Lazica with the Kingdom of Aphkhazeti into Byzantine Empire in 562 AD was followed by 150 years of relative stability that ceased in the early 7th century when the Arabs appeared in the area as a new regional power.

Geographical distribution[link]

Statue of a Laz man and woman. Arhavi (Ark'abi), Turkey

The ancient kingdom of Colchis and its successor Lazica (locally known as Egrisi) was located in the same region the Laz speakers are found in today, and its inhabitants probably spoke an ancestral version of the language. Colchis was the setting for the famous Greek legend of Jason and the Argonauts.

Today most Laz speakers live in Northeast Turkey, in a strip of land along the shore of the Black Sea. They form the majority in the Pazar (Atina), Ardeşen (Art'aşeni) and Fındıklı (Vitze) districts of Rize, and in the Arhavi (Ark'abi) and Hopa (Xopa) districts of Artvin. They live as minorities in the neighbouring Çamlıhemşin (Vijadibi) and Borçka districts. There are also communities in northwestern Anatolia (Karamürsel in Kocaeli, Akçakoca in Düzce, Sakarya, Zonguldak, Bartın), where many immigrants settled since the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) and now also in Istanbul and Ankara.

The Laz in Georgia are chiefly centered in the country's southwestern autonomous republic of Adjara. The largest Laz villages in Adjara are: Sarpi, Kvariati, Gonio and Makho. The Laz also live in Batumi, Kobuleti, Zugdidi and Tbilisi.

An expatriate community of the Laz is also present in Germany where they have migrated from Turkey since the 1960s.

Culture[link]

The Laz language is not written, Turkish and Georgian serving as the literary languages for the Laz in Turkey and Georgia, respectively. Therefore, the Laz are typically bilingual. The Laz possess a colorful folklore. Their folk literature has been transmitted orally and has not been systematically recorded. The first attempts at establishing a distinct Laz cultural identity and creating a literary language based on the Arabic alphabet was made by Faik Efendisi in the 1870s, but he was soon imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities, while most of his works were destroyed. During a relative cultural autonomy granted to the minorities in the 1930s, the written Laz literature—based on the Laz script—emerged in Soviet Georgia, strongly dominated by Soviet ideology. The poet Mustafa Baniṣi spearheaded this short-lived movement, but an official standard form of the tongue was never established.^[7] Since then, several attempts have been made to render the pieces of native literature in the Turkish and Georgian alphabets. A few native poets in Turkey such as Raşid Hilmi and Pehlivanoğlu have appeared later in the 20th century.

The Laz music and dances are highly original, even though they have been developed in close contact with the neighboring peoples. The national instruments include Guda, kemenche (violin), zurna (oboe), and doli (drum). In the 1990s and 2000s, the folk-rock musician Kâzım Koyuncu attained to significant popularity in Turkey and toured Georgia.

Most of the Laz in Turkey belong to the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, while the Laz in Georgia are the Eastern Orthodox Christians adhering to the national Georgian Orthodox Church. Their beliefs have survived in folk poetry and in some customs related to births, marriage, death, seamanship, the New Year, and harvest rituals.

Apart some research activities at universities in Georgia and Germany (University of Cologne), there has been done little to study the language and folk culture of the Laz.^[8] A degree of cultural assimilation into the Turkish medium is high, but there has been some recent upsurge of cultural activities aiming at revitalizing the Laz tongue and folk tradition.^[9]

The social organization of the Laz community is dominated by an elaborate system of kinship in which blood and milk brotherhood as well as elements of blood feuds have survived. The family is strongly dominated by the husband, but, even under Islam, the rule of monogamous marriage has been preserved.

Economy[link]

This section requires expansion.

The traditional Laz economy has been based on agriculture—known for production of hazelnuts until the 1960s, when the introduction of tea cultures which has since been growing in importance. It has largely eliminated the hitherto closed-economy, self-rearing way of life and encouraged many Laz to engage in trading, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union opened the border with Georgia.

The traditions of fishing, hemp cultivation, weaving of the material, ceramics and pottery are also widespread and trace their origin to the Classical antiquity.

Terminology[link]

The Turkish public uses the name "Laz" in a general way to refer to all inhabitants of Turkey's Black Sea provinces east of Samsun, and the word is often associated with certain social stereotypes.^[10] However, the Laz themselves are increasingly keen to differentiate themselves from other inhabitants of these regions. Also, the non-Laz does not want to be called "Laz", preferring to be called Karadenizli ^[11] ("of the Black Sea region"). The Laz language (Lazca in Turkish) is a Kartvelian language, also known as South Caucasian, unrelated to the Trabzon dialect of Turkish.

See also[link]

• Chveneburi
• Chepni
• Hamshenis
• Pontic Greeks
• Adjarians
• Canik

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Andrews, Peter (ed.). 1989. Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag. pp. 497–501.
• Benninghaus, Rüdiger. 1989. "The Laz: an example of multiple identification". In: Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, edited by P. Andrews.
• Bryer, Anthony. 1969. The last Laz risings and the downfall of the Pontic Derebeys, 1812–1840, Bedi Kartlisa 26. pp. 191–210.
• Hewsen, Robert H. Laz. World Culture Encyclopedia. Accessed on September 1, 2007.
• Negele, Jolyon. Turkey: Laz Minority Passive In Face Of Assimilation. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.25 June 1998

External links[link]

• Documentary film about history of the Laz people
• Laz Cultur - Information about Lazs, Laz Language, Culture, Music (Turkish und Laz)
• Laz Cultur - Information about Lazs, Laz Language, Culture, Music
• Laz Cultur - Information about Lazs, Laz Language, Culture, Music and Laz Diaspora
• Information about
• - Georgian Patriarchate's Lazuri TV site
• - Batumi Lazs
• Recordings of traditional Laz music

Tarpley attending the 2005 Axis for Peace conference

Webster Griffin Tarpley (born 1946) is an American historian, author, journalist, lecturer, and critic of US foreign and domestic policy. Tarpley maintains that the September 11 attacks were engineered by a rogue network of the military-industrial complex and intelligence agencies as a false flag operation.^[1] His writings and speeches describe a model of terror operations by a rogue network in the military/intelligence sector working with moles in the private sector and in corporate media, and locates such contemporary false flag operations in a historical context stretching back in the English speaking world to at least the Gunpowder Plot in England in 1605.

Education[link]

The "rogue network" which Tarpley suspects of the September 11 attacks

Tarpley was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1946. He received a BA degree summa cum laude in English and Italian from Princeton University in 1966. While a student at Princeton he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and was a Fulbright Scholar at University of Turin in Italy.^[2] Tarpley also obtained a MA degree in humanities from Skidmore College. As well as a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America in History.

Career[link]

In 1971, Tarpley was on the editorial board of The Campaigner, a National Caucus of Labor Committees' journal, according to its masthead.^[3]

As a European based journalist in the 1980s, Tarpley wrote a study on the assassination of Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The study claimed that the murder was a false flag operation orchestrated by the Propaganda Due, a Masonic Lodge, with the cooperation of senior members of Italian government secret services but blamed on the Red Brigades.^[4]

Tarpley was president of the Schiller Institute of the United States in the 1980s^{[5][clarification needed]} and in 1993.^[6] In 1986 Tarpley attempted to run on Lyndon LaRouche's U.S. Labor Party platform in the New York State Democratic Party primary for the U.S. Senate, but was ruled off the ballot because of a defect in his nominating petitions.^[7] He was a frequent host of "The LaRouche Connection" which its producer LaRouche's Executive Intelligence Review News Service^[8] describes as "a news and information cable television program."^[9]

Tarpley first gained attention for co-authoring, with Anton Chaitkin, ("history editor of Executive Intelligence Review") a 1992 book on George H. W. Bush, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, which was published by Executive Intelligence Review, run by Lyndon LaRouche.^[10] He has expounded the "Versailles Thesis" laying the blame for the great wars of the 20th century on intrigues by Britain to retain her dominance.^[11] He gained experience as a political operative during his years with the LaRouche movement but broke away sometime after 1995.

In 2005, Tarpley published 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. He speaks at length about the themes in the book during an interview in the film Oil, Smoke, Mirrors.

Since March, 2006, Tarpley has had a weekly online talk radio show called World Crisis Radio,^[12] currently hosted on GCNLive.com. Tarpley is a member of the "world anti-imperialist conference" Axis for Peace, of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and of a research Netzwerk of German 9/11 authors founded in September 2006. He is featured in the film, Zero: an investigation into 9/11 (2007–2008).^[13]

Tarpley is a critic of the Dalai Lama; in 2010 he told Russia Today that "pre-1959 Tibet ... was probably the closest thing to hell on earth that you had ... social reform was impossible." In the interview he criticizes US funding of pro-Dalai Lama organizations, which he says amounts to US$2 million per year, saying "this is a bad deal for the American taxpayers."^[14]

He also maintains that "The notion of anthropogenic global warming is a fraud."^[15]

Bibliography[link]

• Chi ha ucciso Aldo Moro? (Who Killed Aldo Moro?), a study commissioned by a member of the Italian government and published in Rome in 1978 The Larouchian, Partito Operaio Europeo http://www.movisol.org/moro.htm, which broke open the affiliation of the Red Brigades with the neofascist lodge P2.
• George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (1992) (co-authored with Anton Chaitkin, son of the lawyer who indicted Prescott Bush under the Trading with the Enemy Act for collaboration with Nazi Germany.) Reprinted 2004, ISBN 0-930852-92-3.
• Against Oligarchy (1996)
• Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide through the Worst Financial Crisis in Human History (1999); updated edition, 2009.
• 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA - Myth of the 21st Century (2005), Foreword by Thierry Meyssan, ISBN 0-930852-31-1, Fourth edition ISBN 0-930852-37-0 (April 2007).
  • Version française: La Terreur Fabriquée, Made in USA : 11 Septembre, le mythe du XXIe siècle (Sept. 2006). ISBN 2-9525571-4-4
  • In Italiano: La Fabbrica del Terrore (Sept. 2007). ISBN 978-88-87307-36-6
  • En Español: 11-S, El Falso Terrorismo Jan. 2008 ISBN 0-930852-98-2.
• Obama - The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate (Apr. 2008) ISBN 0-930852-88-5.
  • Deutsche Fassung: Barack Obama: Wie ein US-Präsident gemacht wird (Aug. 2008) ISBN 978-3-938516-74-4.
  • Japanese Edition: Obama: Dangerous Geometry (Nov. 2008) ISBN 4-88086-239-8
  • Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography (Aug. 2008) ISBN 0-930852-81-8; Japanese edition, March 2009.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tarpley's Website
• Tarpley's Show on the Genesis Network
• Ground Zero Grassy Knoll - Feature article in New York Magazine (March 20, 2006)
• Publisher's web site
• Amazon.com's Webster Griffin Tarpley page

Audio and Video Links:

• Webster Tarpley lecture and interview videos

v t e LaRouche movement History Lyndon LaRouche Views of Lyndon LaRouche LaRouche criminal trials Lyndon LaRouche U.S. Presidential campaigns Organizations Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität Citizens Electoral Council European Workers Party Executive Intelligence Review LaRouche movement National Caucus of Labor Committees Schiller Institute Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement Defunct California Proposition 64 (1986) Fusion Energy Foundation North American Labour Party Party for the Commonwealth of Canada U.S. Labor Party Members Robert Beltran James Bevel Michael Billington Amelia Boynton Robinson Norbert Brainin Anton Chaitkin Jacques Cheminade Billy Davis Sergey Glazyev Janice Hart Hulan Jack Kenneth Kronberg Stanislav Menshikov Theo Mitchell Robert James Moon Kesha Rogers Nataliya Vitrenko William Warfield Frederick Wills Helga Zepp-LaRouche Critics Chip Berlet Daniel Patrick Moynihan John Rees Mike Royko People separated from the movement Nicholas F. Benton Robert Dreyfuss F. William Engdahl Laurent Murawiec Webster Tarpley Related persons Jeremiah Duggan J. Gordon Edwards (entomologist and mountaineer) Daniel Estulin Erik R. Fleming Roy Frankhouser Victor Gunnarsson Zbigniew Jaworowski Gordon M. Johnson Karen Kwiatkowski Eric Lerner Friedwardt Winterberg Book:LaRouche movement Politics portal Wiktionary Wikibooks Wikiquote Wikisource Wikimedia Commons Wikinews Wikiversity