KARS. – Armenian writer Yeghishe Charents’ house, which has been preserved for many years in Kars, Turkey, has been unexpectedly torn down. 

The Armenian News-NEWS.am correspondent reported from Kars that the demolition of this house was a surprise to the locals, too.

According to the rumors being spread in Kars, the nationalist mayor of the city had hurriedly ordered the flattening of this house in response to the events that had occurred in Khojaly village, in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), in February 1992. 

Local government elections will be conducted in Turkey in one month, but the incumbent mayor of Kars has no chances to be reelected, so he decided at the last moment to have Charents’ house destroyed.

But in its official statement on the demolition of this house, the Kars city hall noted that, supposedly, drug addicts assembled in that house, and therefore there was a need to tear it down.

Yeghishe Charents’ house was an important site primarily for Armenian tourists visiting Kars.