Kemalpaşa

Kemalpaşa

Kemalpaşa is a district of Artvin and the center of this district. It is located on the Black Sea coast near the Georgian border. While it was a village in Hopa district, it became a town in 1987. Kemalpaşa became a district with the Decree Law published in 2017. The oldest known name of Kemalpaşa, which was a village until recently, is Makriali. It is thought that this name, which appears in Georgian like this, comes from Makrigialos, which means "long mansion" in Greek. On the contrary, the Georgian or Mingrelian name Makriali; There is also an opinion that it may have taken the form Makrigialos in Greek. It was given as Makrial in the records dated 1886 of the Russians who captured the region in the 1877-1878 Ottoman-Russian War. The Laz name of Kemalpaşa, a Laz settlement, is Noğedi and this word means "bazaar". This naming; In the Black Sea Region, which has a dispersed settlement, it may have been adapted to a mass settlement with a bazaar. On the other hand, the similarity of Noğadiha or Noğadiya, which is mentioned in the sources as a village of Athens (Pazar) district, to Noğedi is striking. So much so that it was given as Noğadiha in the book titled "The Names of Our Villages in the Last Teşkilât-ı Mülkiyede" written in the Arabic alphabet in 1928, when the Alphabet Revolution was to be held, and as Noğadiya in the book titled "Our Villages" published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 1933. The name of the village, translated into Turkish as Makriyal; When used in Ottoman Turkish, it was written as Makriyal. The name of Makriali village; It is also mentioned as Kemalpaşa in the book titled The Names of Our Villages in the Last Teşkilât-ı Mülkiyede, dated 1928, mentioned above. This record shows that the name of the village was changed before 1928.