Guide
Kop Dağı Müdafaası Historical National Park covers 6,335 hectares in Bayburt province and was declared on 18 November 2016. What the directorate says about the ground itself is short and specific: the area has carried the violence of the fighting down to the present, and pieces of war matériel can still be found there today.
The pass matters because of where Bayburt sits. The directorate describes it as the point where the Tiflis-Kars-Erzurum land corridor connects to the eastern Black Sea, an extension of the Caucasus front, and records that the town was occupied twice under Ottoman rule. The first was during the Russo-Ottoman war of 1828-1829, when the town was badly damaged and its castle, a fortified position, suffered heavily. In the war of 1877-1878 the Russian army got no further than Erzurum and never reached Kop mountain, the link between Erzurum and Bayburt, before the Treaty of San Stefano ended the fighting.
The second occupation was in the First World War: the directorate dates it from 16 July 1916 to 19 February 1918, when Russian forces had succeeded in crossing the Kop mountains.
Most of the park's page is given over to a general history of the First World War rather than to the site, and none of that is repeated here. Stated capacity is 200 visitors and 50 vehicles.
- Designated
- 15.11.2016
