Agri is the capital of Agri Province in eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran.

Formerly known as Karaköse from the early Turkish republican period until 1946, and before that as Karakilise, the city is now named after Agri, the Turkish name of Mount Ararat.

In the Ottoman Empire era, the area was called Karakilisa. The current town center was founded around 1860 by a group of Armenian merchants from Bitlis with the name Karakilise (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 Agri by 1946.

In the years of 1927 to 1931, the region was under Occupation of the Kurdish seperatist 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.

In the medieval period, the district's administrative centre was located at Alashkert, once an important town. The "kara kilise" that gave the town its name was a medieval Armenian church. In 1895 Lynch stayed in Karakilise and wrote that it had between 1500-2000 inhabitants, was nearly two-thirds Armenian, and that a barracks for a locally recruited Kurdish Hamidiyeh regiment had been recently located in the town.