Kim Kardashian is keeping

up with the Armenians

Beverly Hills socialite ... Kim Kardashian's life is a world away from her ancestors'
Rex

Fact file: Armenia

£174.17 The average monthly wage in Armenia

£500,000 Kim Kardashian's monthly earnings

9.6% Of Armenians own a mobile telephone

91% Of Americans own one

500 The population of Karakale, north-eastern Turkey

3.7m The population of Los Angeles

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From OLIVER HARVEY, Chief Feature Writer in Karakale, Turkey

Published: Today
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THE photo of the curvaceous, dark-haired woman is passed from one set of gnarled
agricultural hands to another as an icy wind howls across the frozen grassland.

"Kim Kardashian?" cattle farmer Cengiz Kesikkol, 42, says in heavily-accented Turkish. "She is
very beautiful, like the women in our village — but we've never heard of her."

With horse-drawn carts clip-clopping past tumbledown stone shacks, remote Karakale is more
like the fictional Borat movie than Los Angeles' Beverly Hills.

Yet it was from this poverty-blighted village on the Eastern Europe/Southwest Asia border that
Californian reality TV star Kim's God-fearing family fled as the storm clouds of one of history's
greatest tragedies swirled.

Now, for the first time, The Sun can reveal the Kardashian family's incredible journey from
membership of an obscure Christian sect in this snow-capped wilderness to reality TV stars in
just four generations.

Armenian-American Kim — who famously featured in an internet sex "tape" — has often
spoken proudly of her roots.

The 31-year-old whose marriage to NBA player Kris Humphries ended in October after just 72
days, once revealed: "I was raised with a huge Armenian influence, always hearing stories of
Armenia, celebrating Armenian holidays.

"My father taught us to never forget where we came from."

Today, life in the Kardashian's home village of Karakale — in east Turkey close to the Armenian
border — appears to have changed little since the Middle Ages.

Some 500 Muslim farmers eke out a meagre living making cheese and growing root vegetables
on the frozen wastes while women in headscarves rise early to milk the herds of dairy cows by
hand.

But a look at the well-built village mosque tells a story from another age.
Drawing a blank ... locals in Karakale with a picture of Kim Kardashian

Farmer and dad-of-five Salman Gopur, 60, showed us his 135-year-old cottage and revealed:
"The mosque was once a church many years ago. Christians used to live in the village but not
now."

I asked Salman if there had been bloodshed. An AK47-toting soldier motioned to him not to
answer.

In fact, Karakale was once an ethnic Armenian village. Salman's shack may even have been the
home to Kim Kardashian's great grandad.

Formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, from 1878 to 1917 the village and the surrounding
province of Kars was ruled by Russia.

The Tsars offered land to peasants in this new borderland and some migrants brought with them
the Molokan Christian faith.

Many of Karakale's Armenian villagers came under the sway of a branch of Molokan teaching
whose faithful were known as Jumpers.
Armenian-American ... Kim Kardashian's family emigrated to the US in the early 20th Century

So-called because some members leapt in the air with hands held up during a religious service,
Jumpers believed in the power of prophecy.

In July 1896, Jumpers Sam and Harom Kardaschoff — a Russian spelling of the Armenian name
Kardashian — became proud parents to a little boy called Tatos — Kim's great grandfather.

But in 1915 a bloodshed which Armenians call the Great Calamity swept across the eastern
plains of what is now Turkey. Many historians call it the Armenian Genocide.
Life in the fast lane ... farmer heads into town in eastern Turkey

Ottoman Turks deported Armenians to the Syrian desert. Thousands were butchered or died from
starvation or disease.

The number of Armenians who died is disputed but the International Association of Genocide
Scholars claim it was "more than a million".

Armenians who remained in Turkey were forced to convert to Islam, Christians who refused
were herded into barns which were set on fire.

Some 20 countries have recognised the genocide but Britain and the US have declined so as not
to upset Turkey, a Nato ally.
Siren ... Kim's reality TV series has made her a multi-millionaire

Early this year Kim wrote: "It's time to recognise the Armenian Genocide.

"Until this crime is resolved, the Armenian people will live with the pain of what happened to
their families."

Karakale itself became part of Armenia after Russia's 1917 revolution, before becoming
officially part of Turkey in 1921.

So how did the Kardashians escape the genocide horrors?

They, like many Armenian Jumpers, listened to an 11-year-old "boy prophet" Efim
Gerasemovitch Klubniken, who, in 1852, had urged them to flee to escape a tragedy.

Wrapping up ... local women sport headscarves in snowy Karakale

He identified Los Angeles on a map — some 7,000 miles away — as the place to head. People
began to flee in the early 20th Century.

Sam and Harom Kardaschoff, with their son Tatos and his siblings, fled in the autumn of 1913
— just before the bloodshed.
Once in LA, Tatos anglicised his name to Tom, started a business in rubbish collection and
married another Karakale Jumper immigrant, Hamas Shakarian.

Short-lived marriage ... Kim Kardashian and her husband of 72 days, Kris Humphreys

The family moved into the meat-packing business, becoming hugely wealthy through grit and
hard work. The couple's son Arthur — alive today at 94 — and Armenian wife Helen built up the
business.
Arthur — father to Kim's dad Robert — was said to have had the largest meat-packing company
in southern California.

Robert, who died of esophageal cancer in 2003, became a celebrity lawyer and married Kim's
American mum Kris. Kim's socialite siblings — Khloe, Kourtney and Rob — have all featured
in TV's Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

Rural ... Turkish farmers herd cattle in Karakale, a formerly Armenian village

Richard G. Hovannisian, Professor of Armenian and near Eastern history at the University of
California, said: "It's amazing the family have gone from the ultra religious Jumpers to Kim
Kardashian in such a short period of time."

On my visit to Karakale, locals were initially very wary, but after assuring them I was a
journalist, they were soon welcoming.
Entrepreneurs ... Kim's grandfather Arthur Kardashian on the day of his wedding to Helen

Huseyin Aslanbenzer, 55, who runs one of the village's two tiny shops selling sugar, pasta and
chocolates, insisted: "We don't have much here but we are happy."

Mayor Atilla Gopur, 42, said the villagers arrived in Karakale from neighbouring Georgia after
the Armenians had fled.

The dad-of-three, who has ten milking cows, said: "It's a big surprise Kim Kardashian is from
our village — but we would love her to come and visit."
Daddy's girl ... Kim Kardashian with her father Robert