Village divided by border maintains unbreakable kinship ties
ARTVİN
Nestled in the northeastern corner of Türkiye, along the Black Sea coast, the village of Sarp continues to embody unbroken kinship despite the presence of political borders.
After the demarcation of the Turkish-Georgian border in 1921, the once-unified settlement was split into two, Sarp on the Turkish side and Sarpi on the Georgian side.
Despite the division, familial ties between the two sides have endured for over a century.
The border, drawn along a stream that runs through the village, forced families to live under two different flags. Villagers recount decades of separation, especially during the Soviet era when contact was nearly impossible.
From 1936 onwards, even first-degree relatives could not visit one another without rare and complex permissions. That changed with the opening of the Sarp Border Gate in 1988, one of Türkiye’s most strategic land crossings to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Yalçın Çakır, the headman of Sarp, recalled the painful years of separation. “Until 1936, people could meet using limited transit permits. But after that, even siblings couldn’t see each other.” His own relatives —uncles, aunts and cousins — remain in Sarpi.
“Two-thirds of the Çakıroğlu family are on the Georgian side,” he noted. “But whether it’s a funeral or wedding, we never stop visiting. Our hearts beat as one.”
Fellow resident Mükerrem Tuzcu emphasized that about 80 percent of those in Sarp have relatives across the stream. “My aunt was on the other side. As soon as the border opened, I took my son and went to visit. We never broke our ties.” She recounted how, during the years of closed borders, she brought her aunt to Türkiye on a special invitation. “We cried and embraced. Her house is visible from mine,” she said.
Bayram Ali Özşahin, another villager, spoke of the emotional toll of the division. “There was a time when even pointing toward the other side was considered a crime. But we knew who lived in which house. When someone died, we’d hear the cries across the valley and know exactly whose sorrow it was.”
Over a hundred years later, despite geopolitical shifts and scars of separation, the villagers of Sarp and Sarpi continue to defy borders.
