Before World War I, the Karin dialect was spoken by the local Armenian populations in much of the Erzurum Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire and Kars Oblast of the Russian Empire. After the Armenian genocide of 1915, most of Erzurum's Armenian population took refuge to the Russian-controlled parts of Armenia. The city of Kars and its Russian "oblast" became part of the First Republic of Armenia in 1918, but was occupied by Kemalist Turkey as a result of the Turkish–Armenian War in fall 1920.