[5] The only exception was the Surmali region, which had been part of the Erivan Khanate of Iran before it was annexed by Russia in the Treaty of Turkmenchay after the Russo-Persian War of 1826–1828.

[3] The treaty required the region to be granted political autonomy because of the largely-Muslim local population and for it to implement "an agrarian system in conformity with its own wishes".

[7] According to the memoirs of Simon Vratsian, the last prime minister of the First Armenian Republic, the Bolsheviks attempted to renegotiate the status of Ani and Kulp and to retain them as part of Soviet Armenia.

[9] The treaty required Turkish troops to withdraw from an area roughly corresponding to the western half of Armenia's present-day Shirak Province, including the city of Aleksandropol (Gyumri).

The annexation of the formerly Qajar Iranian district of Surmali (until the Treaty of Turkmenchay of 1828) and the Aras corridor now gave Turkey a slightly more extensive border with Iran.

As Turkey attempted to quash the rebellion, the Kurdish rebels fled across the Iranian border to the eastern flank of Lesser Ararat, which they used "as a haven against the state in their uprising".

[15] However, the agreement was delayed by objections from some Iranian diplomats, who viewed the Lesser Ararat area as strategically important and questioned the validity of the Treaty of Kars.

[16] The diplomats felt that Turkey did not have a legitimate claim to the territory of Surmali, which had been part of Iran before it was ceded to Imperial Russia by the Treaty of Turkmenchay.

[16] After a constructive meeting with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Ankara in 1934, Reza Shah, who initially wanted to annex the Aras corridor, finally ordered his diplomats to drop any objections and to accept the new border agreements.

As the Cold War began, the American government saw the claims as part of an "expansionist drive by a Communist empire" and viewed them as reminiscent of Nazi irredentist designs over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

[22] Following the death of Stalin in 1953, the Soviet government renounced its territorial claims on Turkey as part of an effort to promote friendly relations with the Middle Eastern country and its alliance partner, the United States.

However, according to Christopher J. Walker, Moscow revisited the treaty in 1968, when it attempted to negotiate a border adjustment with Turkey in which the ruins of Ani would be transferred to Soviet Armenia in exchange for two Azerbaijani villages in the area of Mount Akbaba.

[24] Specifically, Article XVII of the treaty called for the "free transit of persons and commodities without any hindrance" among the signatories and that the parties would take "all the measures necessary to maintain and develop as quickly as possible railway, telegraphic, and other communications".

[26][27] Initially, the Russian Foreign Ministry considered that action to send a political message to the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.