Cultural geography of the city of Kars (According to the elements of material culture)

Kars is located in the Erzurum-Kars section of the Eastern Anatolian region. It is surrounded by Armenia from the east, Erzurum from the west, Ardahan from the north, Iğdır and Ağrı provinces from the south. Due to its geographical location, it is the gateway of Anatolia to the Caucasus. Because it is a border city, it has hosted many civilizations. Being the meeting place of civilizations has increased cultural diversity. The history of the city was shaped especially by the Ottoman-Russian wars. The Russians were constantly at war with the Ottomans in order to dominate the city. Kars is known as the gateway to Eastern Anatolia for the Russians. For this purpose, the city was subjected to severe attacks. The Russians achieved these goals with the Ottoman-Russian war of 1877-1878. As a result of this war, the city remained under Russian rule for nearly forty years. During this time, the Russians tried to move the city away from its basic values and turn it into a typical Russian city. Soviet-style practices were implemented in many fields such as education, administration, demography and architecture. The city has a rich cultural diversity. It is among the most colorful cities of Anatolia. This colorfulness is reflected in many areas such as clothing, home culture, food culture, folk dances. Recently, the interest in the city has increased considerably with the effect of tourism. Especially the eastern express has spread the popularity of the city to a wide area with the effect of social media. In this way, the material and spiritual cultural elements of the city began to be recognized. The ethnographic research method, one of the Qualitative Research methods, was used as the research method. On-site observation and unstructured interview forms were used as data collection tools. During the research, the basic principles of geography, travel observation, causality and cause-effect principles were taken into account. Due to the idea that the laboratory of geography is the land, field research was emphasized. Keywords: Culture, Cultural Geography, Residential Culture, Food Culture, Kars