Advertisement
Published: April 18th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Our first day together as a tour group. Oktay, our Tour Director, gave us a sample of his efficiency along with our Coach Driver Serdar. Suitcases out and stacked into our motorcoach and done with breakfast, we checked out of Taslic Hotel and drove along the Sea of Marmara to Gallipoli. Oktay made sure we all understood that this part of Turkey is still on the European side of the Dardanelles, before we made our ferry crossing to Cannakale in Asia Minor. So, it was a day to visit 2 continents today. Europe and Asia. How about that?
Just slightly over an hour into our long drive, Oktay played a black and white (uggh) documentary on the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915-16 during the First World War, a war event which was a defining moment for Turkey and its founding leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the acknowledged founder of modern Turkey. Ataturk was then a 34 year old commander during the war against a combined British-French Allied troops aiming to capture the Ottoman capital of Istanbul, then called Constantinople. The Ottoman Empire was then allied with the Germans and Austrians. At a time when the Read Ataturk's Message!
Right Behind us........ Ottoman Empire was crumbling, Ataturk's impressive command of the Turkish forces earned for him and the Turks the honor and privilege of laying the foundation for a Turkish Republic and the Presidency some 8 years later.
The Gallipoli Campaign cannot be discussed without mentioning the young troops from Australia and New Zealand, summoned to fight a war in the name of the British Empire. We visited the many sites of the ANZAC battle, where Australian and New Zealand corps combined for its first major battle. To this day, ANZAC day is celebrated every April 25 and remains the most significant commemoration of military casualties in Australia and New Zealand. We checked out the trenches , not so distant from each other, and imagined how the Turks under Ataturk repelled the invading Anzac forces. At the memorial at Anzac Cove, it is hard not to be moved by Ataturk's 1934 message inscribed in stone:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives..........you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country . Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets where they lie side by side here in this country of ours...........You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. Having lost their lives in this land , they have become our sons as well. "
We have seen monuments, paintings, statues of Ataturk all around Turkey . In almost all, Mustafa's facial expression was that of a very stern, determined leader. His conviction echoed through the stone, or the marble, or the brass, or the canvass. His eyes, in particular, had an almost devilish look............which seemed to resonate with his famous order to his troops: "I am not giving you an order to attack. I am giving you an order to die!" Such conviction. And many lives, on both Anzac and Turkish sides, were lost. Looking at the trenches, I am also inclined to believe the stories that some sort of camaraderie prevailed between the fighting troops. It is not hard to imagine them even conducting a conversation across the trenches.
In the history of the great wars, the Gallipoli campaign may pale in comparison with the other battles. The nine-month campaign cost many lives, yet hardly yielded a real victory except to hold off the advance of the Allied troops. After all that bloodshed, Gallipoli remained held by its Turkish defenders. But one thing's for sure. Turkey held its ground, and produced a leader in the person of Mustafa Kemal, who was later given the honorary title of Ataturk, meaning "Father of the Turks".
(check out my earlier blog on istanbul: A Second Time Around In Istanbul)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 13; qc: 31; dbt: 0.0347s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
EuroTraveler
Jeff Titelius
a very solumn story...
This place must have profoundly affected all of you...I am glad that you got to see the film so that you understood the context and the history of this land...I am not a history buff really so I would have been extremely grateful for the brief lesson of the past... Keep 'em coming, Lili!!!