There is so much history here… Yesterday I rode around the Gallipoli Peninsula as I wanted to see this part of the world after reading much about the conflict. In 1906 the leader of the Ottoman Empire decided to strengthen and build new forts and batteries along the Dardanelles Straits to ensure the safety of Istanbul, arming them with 220, 240 and 260mm artillery guns from Krupps in Germany.
When Turkey declared war in WW1 the Allies wanted to take control of Istanbul but they had to eliminate the forts to do this. The forts were very powerful and the Royal Navy soon learnt how powerful they were after loosing several ships, so they decided to land a force to subdue the forts, thereby making the straits open for an invasion fleet. In January 1915 the British landed at Helles Point but they didn’t get too far, so they landed the Australians and Kiwi’s on Anzac Beach and Suvla Bay in a flanking operation. That didn’t work either. As brave and as hard and as bloody as the Allies fought, the Turkish were tenacious in their defence, and 11 months later the Allies retreated. 300k Allied and 233k Turkish soldiers, sailors and airmen died during this folly.
Besides some spectacular Turkish forts, I also visited two museums which were very interesting. I also visited Helles, One Pine Ridge, Anzac and Suvla Bay, as well as several cemeteries – Turkish and Allied. I lost count of the number of cemeteries, and in some places the cemeteries were only a short distance apart. At ‘One Pine Ridge’ the remains of Allied and Turkish trenches are still there, no more than 100m apart, and you can actually walk along them. Its really sobering when you come so close to to where men lived and died in such poor circumstances.
One good thing to come out of this was Turkey’s independence. General Attaturk was the general in control of the peninsula, and he was much renowned by his men. After WW1 he became the leader of a political movement to rid Turkey of the Ottomans, and in 1923 Turkey became an independent nation, with the Dardanelles proving that Turkey was a strong nation that could stand on it’s own feet.
