On 3 March 1918, in the aftermath of the October Revolution the Russian SFSR ceded the entire Kars oblast 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 more than 100,000 Armenian inhabitants.

[6] 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.

[10] 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 in July 1919.

This number may imply that the 200,868 estimate for 1892 given by Brockhaus is too low, or that a large-scale migration from other provinces of the empire took place in between:[18] The 30,000 excess population of male over females was mainly attributed to the European language speakers.

This preponderance of males in the European language speakers (reported to a lesser extent in neighbouring governorates as well) may indicate presence of a large numbers of soldiers or exiled persons in the region.