The Kagizman
okrug was one of the four territorial administrative subunits (counties) of the Kars Oblast created after its annexation into the Russian Empire in 1878 through the
Treaty of San Stefano, following the
defeat of the
Ottoman Empire. During the
First World War, the Kars Oblast became the site of
intense battles between the
Russian Caucasus Army supplemented by
Armenian volunteers and the
Ottoman Third Army, the latter of whom was successful in
briefly occupying Ardahan on 25 December 1914 before they were dislodged in early January 1915. On 3 March 1918, in the aftermath of the
October Revolution the
Russian SFSR ceded the entire
Kars Oblast including the Kagizman okrug through the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Ottoman Empire, who had been unreconciled with its loss of the territory since 1878. Despite the ineffectual resistance of the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic which had initially rejected the aforementioned treaty, the Ottoman Third Army was successful in occupying the Kars Oblast and expelling its 100,000 panic-stricken Armenian inhabitants. The Ottoman
Ninth Army under the command of
Yakub Shevki Pasha, the occupying force of the district by the time of the
Mudros Armistice, were permitted to winter in Kars until early 1919, after which on 7 January 1919 Major General
G.T. Forestier-Walker ordered their complete withdrawal to the pre-1914 Ottoman-frontier. Intended to hinder the westward expansion of the fledgling
Armenian and
Georgian republics into the Kars Oblast, Yukub Shevki backed the emergence of the short-lived
South-West Caucasus Republic with moral support, also furnishing it with weapons, ammunition and instructors. The South-West Caucasus Republic administered the Kagizman okrug and neighboring formerly occupied districts for three months before provoking British intervention by order of General
G.F. Milne, leading to its capitulation by
Armenian and
British forces on 10 April 1919. Consequently, the Kars Oblast largely came under the Armenian civil governorship of Stepan Korganian who wasted no time in facilitating the repatriation of the region's exiled refugees. Despite the apparent defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish agitators were reported by
Armenian intelligence to have been freely roaming the countryside of Kars encouraging sedition among the Muslim villages, culminating in a series of anti-Armenian uprisings on 1 July 1919. The Kars Oblast for the third time in six years saw invading Turkish troops, this time under the command of General
Kâzım Karabekir in September 1920 during the
Turkish-Armenian War. The disastrous war for Armenia resulted in the permanent expulsion of the region's ethnic Armenian population, many who inexorably remained befalling massacre, resulting in the region joining the
Republic of Turkey through the
Treaty of Alexandropol on 3 December 1920. Turkey's annexation of Kars and the adjacent
Surmalu Uyezd was confirmed in the treaties of
Kars and
Moscow in 1921, by virtue of the new
Soviet regime in Armenia. == Administrative divisions ==