Ağrı (Turkish pronunciation: [ɑːɾɯ]; Kurdish: Agirî) is a city in eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran. It is the seat of Ağrı Province and Ağrı District. Its population is 120,390 (2021). It was formerly known as Karaköse. In the early Turkish republican period and until 1946, it was officially known as Karakilise. the city is now named after Ağrı, the Turkish name of Mount Ararat.

Ağrı has old settlements such as Doğubeyazıt and Patnos, whose origins date back to the Middle Ages and the Islamic period. Over a long period of time, the region became part of the Urartians, the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander, the Seleucids, and the Armenian Kingdom, which recognized Persian and Roman domination for many years.

With the Islamic conquests that began after the death of Prophet Muhammad in 632, the region came under Muslim rule. The Muslims took this region from the Armenians and the Iranians (Sassanid Empire) and attached it to their own caliphate, and managed to have a say in the region for a long time. The first Muslims to settle in the region were settled in 872 during the Abbasid period.

The city came under Seljuk rule from the Byzantine rule for a short time after the 1048 Battle of Kaperton. The Mongols conquered all of Anatolia including Ağrı in the Battle of Kose Dağ in 1243 and the city was later included in the Ilkhanate Khanate established in 1256.

Shah Ismail founded the Safavid state in 1501 and conquered Ağrı and its surroundings in his eastern Anatolian campaign in 1503. With the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, the city under Safavid control came under Ottoman rule. In the 17th century, the famous Kurdish astronomer, geographer, philosopher and Islamic scholar Ehmede Xani came to this city. He received education in the Beyazıt Palace and developed his ideas there.

The Dogubayazit district in the 19th century he town witnessed conflicts in the Ottoman–Persian War, when Abbas Mirza, commander-in-chief of Qajar Iran, occupied the town in 1821, and later in 1856, when it was attacked by Russia and taken by the Russians during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878). When the Russians retreated, most of the local Armenians left with them to build Yeni Beyazıt (now Gavar in Armenia) on the shores of Lake Sevan.

The current town center was founded around 1860 by a group of Armenian merchants from Bitlis with the name Karakilise (قره‌کلیسا, lit. 'the black church') that became known to the local population as Karakise, and this version was turned officially to Karaköse at the beginning of the Republican era. This name was changed to Ağrı by 1946.^{[citation needed]}

In the years of 1927 to 1931, the region was under the occupation of the Kurdish separatist movements, which gained to establish an unrecognized state named Republic of Ararat which was led by several Kurdish leaders, some of the Main were Ibrahim Heski and Ihsan Nuri.^{[citation needed]}