Georgia is a corridor whose capital does not administer the whole country

Georgia lies in the Caucasus as a passage between the Black Sea and the mountainous east. Tbilisi sits in the valley of the Mtkvari, not on a summit and not at the harbour. The capital administers the country it can reach. It cannot reach Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

TerraTally gives 69,700 square kilometres and a population of 3,935,766. The neighbours are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and Turkey. The state language is Georgian, and in Abkhazia, under the constitution, also Abkhaz. People pay in lari. The Greater Caucasus to the north and the Lesser Caucasus to the south leave the state a valley. The capital stands in that valley. On the edges stand territories that another daily life governs.

Tbilisi in the valley between the chains

The Mtkvari, on many maps the Kura, divides Tbilisi. The city is tight because the valley is tight, and spreads only where the slopes allow it. Kutaisi further west is the older urban tradition, Batumi on the Black Sea coast the harbour. None of these cities replaces Tbilisi. The capital sits where the roads from the east, the west and the south have to cross if they do not want to go over the mountains.

That position makes Georgia a corridor. Armenia and Azerbaijan lie to the south and east, Turkey to the south-west, Russia behind the main ridge. Anyone who wants to go from the Black Sea toward the Caspian basin without taking Russia or Iran comes through this valley. Tbilisi is therefore not just any capital of a mountain country. It is the city that administers the passage, for as long as the passage is in its hands.

The coast and the territories without Tbilisi

Batumi and the south-western strip of coast belong to the daily life of the capital. The coast of Abkhazia does not. South Ossetia, in Tbilisi's language the Tskhinvali region, lies north of the capital on the way into the Greater Caucasus and is likewise not administered from Tbilisi. Since the war of 2008 Russia has recognised both as states. Most other states, and recurring resolutions of the UN General Assembly, treat them as part of Georgia.

The corridor is therefore incomplete in the hands of the state that owns it on the map. Part of the Black Sea shore is missing from the capital. Part of the northern border as well. The constitution claims the whole territory, including Abkhaz as a state language beside Georgian. The claim and the administration come apart. Georgia is that coming apart, not only a valley city with vineyards.

Tbilisi administers the valley. Not every part of the map answers to Tbilisi.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

A script that carries a state language only here

Georgian is written in a script of its own, which is not a variant of the Latin, Cyrillic or Arabic alphabet. The language is the state language of a republic whose neighbours speak other families. That separates Tbilisi from Moscow, Ankara and also from Baku and Yerevan more clearly than the distance in kilometres. The lari does on the coin what the script does on the statute: it marks a state of its own in the corridor.

Abkhaz stands in the same constitution, for a territory Tbilisi does not administer. The clause is not a detail for people who love languages. It shows that the state has taken its edges into the text, including where administration ends. Georgia remains a corridor between sea and mountains. The map is complete. The capital is not.

Georgia can be remembered as mountain country between neighbours and understood only by asking what Tbilisi actually administers. The valley belongs to the capital. Parts of the coast and of the north belong on the map and not in daily administration.