Turkey Guide
The Black Sea coast
The Hemşin valleys
The most scenic and interesting of the foothill regions east of Trabzon are the valleys of the Fırtına Çayı and its tributaries, which tumble off the steepest slopes of the Pontic ranges, here known as the Kaçkar Dağları. Between the mountains and the sea lie a few hundred square kilometres of rugged, isolated territory that have been imperfectly controlled at best by the prevailing imperial, or regional, powers of every era.
The area is known simply as Hemşin, a word whose etymology encapsulates local history: "-eşen" is a local dialect suffix, derived from Armenian, meaning "population" or "settlement", as in "Hamameşen" or "the settlement around the baths" (the hot springs at today's Ayder). Over time this was abbreviated to Hemşin, and came to describe the triangular zone with its base against the mountains and its apex at Pazar, and by extension the people in it.