Guide
Sarıkamış-Allahuekber Mountains National Park spreads across the border of Kars and Erzurum provinces, covering the Sarıkamış forests and the Allahuekber range. The Directorate General of Nature Conservation and National Parks gives its area two ways: 22,856.16 hectares in the area record, 22,520 hectares in the descriptive text. The declaration is dated 17 November 2004 in the record, while the text says the park was declared through publication in the Official Gazette of 19 October 2004, issue 25618.
The directorate names two reasons for the protection, and the first is not natural. On the Allahuekber mountains stand memorials to the Sarıkamış operation of 1914-1915, in which, the directorate states, around 90,000 Turkish soldiers froze to death. It adds that various sources record twenty burial grounds for the soldiers killed, that only seven of these have a monument, and that the rest are areas whose boundaries are not marked. Anyone coming to visit them should plan around that: the marked sites are the ones that can be found. Allahuekber, Tekçam, Soğanlı and Dikenli Tabya cemeteries are all reached by private vehicle on stabilised roads, and a commemoration programme with organised walks is held every year.
The second reason is the forest. Scots pine reaches its highest altitude in Türkiye here and forms pure stands of optimal structure. Growing with it are steppe oak, stinking juniper, aspen, barberry and downy birch.
The bird list is dominated by raptors and scavengers: cinereous, griffon, bearded and Egyptian vultures, along with eagles, buzzards, falcons, kites, sparrowhawks and kestrels, and the Caucasian chiffchaff. Brown bear, wolf, fox, roe deer, wild boar, stone marten, weasel and hare are present, as is the Caucasian frog. Access is by private vehicle: from Sarıkamış town it is 7.8 kilometres to the controlled use zone, then about 6 kilometres further on stabilised roads through pasture and forest to the sustainable use zone, while the strict protection zone can be approached by vehicle to within 2.1 kilometres.
- Designated
- 19.10.2004
Entry fee
- Black Sea group 3 · category 2 · Per person
- 50 ₺
- Southeastern Anatolia group 1 · category 2 · Per person
- 40 ₺
