Ağrı (Turkish pronunciation: [ɑːɾɯ]; Kurdish: Agirî;[2] Armenian: Քարբեր, romanized: Karber[3]) is a city in eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran.

[6] The current town center was founded around 1860 by a group of Armenian merchants from Bitlis with the name Karakilise (قره‌کلیسا, lit.

'the black church') that became known to the local population as Karakise, and this version was turned officially to Karaköse at the beginning of the Republican era.

[citation needed] In the medieval period, the district's administrative centre was located at Alashkert, once an important town.

In 1895 H. F. B. Lynch stayed in Karakilise and wrote that it had between 1500 and 2000 inhabitants, was nearly two-thirds Armenian, and that a barracks for a locally recruited Kurdish Hamidiye regiment had been recently located in the town.

[7] The Armenian population of the town and surrounding valley was massacred by the Ottoman troops, assisted by tribal Kurds during the Armenian Genocide: a New York Times report from March 1915 mentions the Alashkert valley being covered with the bodies of men, women, and children.

The local MP Fatma Salman Kotan has written of the need to erode the patriarchal nature of society in the region.