How to raise the awareness of children and young people and how to pass them historical information about the place they live? How to teach them respect to the historical heritage and the other cultures that shaped the Kars and made it a place it is now? Kars TOG Youth Organization and Anadolu Kültür find a way to do it. In April and May 2009 around 600 children took part in the project "Town and Children: Rediscovering the Kars".

Oktay Şanli described the idea:

Anadolu Kultur as the designer of the project offered us to organize it together. Usually children do not know a lot about their place of living, they do not look around while walking the street. After the project they started to admire the place they live and pay more attention to it. They also became aware of the multicultural heritage of the Kars. As we want to continue this work, we will start the new project in December. We will cooperate more with the local museum in Kars and organize the handcraft workshops for the children.

As the project turned out to be success the idea of encouraging the other TOG Youth Organizations all over Turkey to develop the similar projects in their towns appeared. That is way the volunteers from Kars decide to implement a "TOG Atak".

Cultural Heritage TOG ATAK in Kars

Between 23rd and 26th October around 50 TOG Volunteers from different cities in Turkey gathered in Kars to discover the fascinating history and culture. The program was a surprise – the participants knew only the time of the gatherings.





What do you know about Turkey?

The first activity caused some problems. Participants had been divided into groups and were supposed to recognize some Turkish sightseeing places by the picture. The task figured out to be a little bit confusing and helped the volunteers to realize that they might know a lot but always can learn more about the place their live, in this case Turkey.





Kars guided tour

During the first day of TOG ATAK the participants were discovering the Kars with the guides. Two well educated and fascinated with the Kars guides welcomed the group in the Namik Kemal's Cultural Center. They started with a welcome part that was followed by the short introduction to the Kars's history. The guides, Aybuke and Burcu, both around 10 years old, took part in the spring project, where they had learned the whole information they were sharing with participants during the Kars tour.

Aybuke explained:

Kars is a special place, a lot of different people were living here – Russians, Armenians, Turks. That is why it is so interesting.

The TOG's ATAK participants, using the small guide books and with the help of the guides step by step were discovering the Kars, in the same way as the children who had participated in the project in spring. The Topçuoğlu Hamam, the Karahanoğlu Stone Bridge, Kars Castle, the Twelve Apostles Church and the old houses built in the period when the city was under Russian governorship were the main point of the tour. The next stop was the Kars museum.

Demonstrate the idea

After visiting museums exhibition and preparing some handcrafts, the special preparations started. Putting cream and powder on the faces and the hats on the heads. The banners were already prepared. The aim – to attract peoples attention to the necessity of preserving the historical and cultural heritage of Kars. The group of around 60 people walked through the town center to make the Kars community aware of the need of preserving the town’s cultural heritage.

Discovering the unknown – The Molokans

The evening brought new big surprise – the film. The documentary was about the Molokans, one of the ethnic group that influenced the history of the area of the Kars. The Russians peasants with the special religious beliefs who refused to obey the Orthodox Church rules were sent to the exile in the area of Caucasus in the 19th century. They were called Molokans, "milk drinkers", as during their fast period they were drinking milk. The important part of their religion was rejecting any kind of violence and denying to serve in the army. Most of them were forced to leave the area of the Kars after they denied to join the Turkish army during the Independence war. Just few of them left in the villages around Kars. The evening film was the introduction to what was about to happen the next morning.

Rukiye Teyze

In the small village near Kars lives Rukiye Teyze, one of the last Molokans. The meeting with her and the other village inhabitants was a great opportunity to listen to the story of their life which in the same time is also the story of the Kars. From the best source of information participants learned about the Molokans' tradition and customs, but also about their nowadays life.

Ani

The last point of the program was the visit to Ani, one of the most impressive historic places in the north-eastern Turkey. In just only two days the Kars TOG Youth Organization's volunteers managed to show the beauty of their hometown and open the eyes of participants to the topics they were not aware of, like the Molokans minority.

Malik from Maraş said:

In this two days I felt here almost as a foreigner. I realized that I do not know anything about this part of my country. You can read a historical book, you can hear from somebody about the place and its history but to come here, to see it and to speak with the local people was really a great experience.