A total of more than 3,500 Armenians was living in this kaza on the eve of WW1. They were deported down the Konya-Bozanti (Tr: Pozantı) route in August 1915 under the supervision of the kaymakam of Kandere, Kamil Bey, who held his post from 9 January 1913 to 10 March 1917.[1]
Situated on the Black Sea coast, there were two clusters of Armenian villages on each sides of the Sakarya River in 1914. One, two hours south of Incirli, comprised four rural centers, founded in the mid-nineteenth century by Armenians of Hamshen (Tr: Hemşin): Açambaşi was inhabited by 42 islamized ‘Armenian Laz’ families; Kegham had 596 Christian Armenian inhabitants; Çukur had 40 households, and Aram/Kızılcı had a population of 347. The other group of villages, lying northeast of Kandere on the left bank of the Sakarya, comprised five hamlets that had been founded in the seventeenth century: Fındıklı (Gr: Funtuklia; Φουντούκλια; also Foundouklia; pop. 500), Ferizli (pop. 872), Tamlek (pop. 416), and Almalu (pop. 471).[2]