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Imerkhevi


Imerkhevi (Georgian: იმერხევი, Turkish: İmerhev) is a valley in the north of the Şavşat district in the Artvin Province of Turkey, along the border with Georgia. There are 15 villages in this area, inhabited by ethnic Georgians, who speak a local dialect of the Georgian language.

Imerkhevi was historically one of the subregions that made up Shavsheti, a medieval Georgian fiefdom on the upper course of the Imerkhevi or Berta river, east of Nigali, west of the Arsiani Range (Yalnızçam) and bounded by Adjara on the north. After these territories were conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, Imerkhevi (İmerhev) became a sanjak and its people gradually converted to Islam. The territory was acquired by the Russian Empire through the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. Shavsheti and Imerkhevi were organized into the Shavsheto-Imerkhevsky circuit (uchastok) as part of the Batum Oblast. As of 1886, the circuit had a population of 18,319, of which 41.2% were Georgians, 51.3% Turks, and 7.0% Armenians. Following the turmoil of World War I (1914–1918) and the short-lived independence of Georgia (1918–1921), Imerkhevi became a part of Turkey according to the territorial rearrangements in the 1921 treaties of Moscow and Kars.


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