Kelkit

Kelkit's late medieval history was shaped by competing powers in northeastern Anatolia. Conflict between the Qara Qoyunlu and Aq Qoyunlu affected the district before Ottoman consolidation. After the campaign culminating at Chaldiran in 1514, Sultan Selim I incorporated Kelkit with the Bayburt region. Feruhsad Bey, an Aq Qoyunlu ally against the Safavids, received extensive land revenues around Bayburt and Kelkit.

Sixteenth-century land and endowment registers place Kelkit-Sadak as a subdistrict under the Bayburt sanjak. The area was attached to the newly established Erzurum provincial government in 1535, after a period within Diyarbekir's administration. These changes locate the valley within specific Ottoman institutions rather than an unspecified imperial frontier. Its earlier strategic importance as an eastern border district diminished as Ottoman territory expanded farther east towards the end of the century. Kelkit's position thus changed through conquest, rewards to an allied notable and the reorganisation of provincial authority.