Canakkale in three parts: Travelling, Troy, and Travesty
Part 1: Travelling
Before I went to Brazil I tried - well intended at any rate - to learn a bit of Portuguese. Before I went to Chile I picked up a wee Spanish phrase book. This time I didn't do either. Romanian, Turkish, Greek, Croatian, Arabic... it seemed there were too many too diverse languages on my intended itinerary to even contemplate. And, though I don't always succeed at doing everything I plan to do, I'm pretty good at not doing things I've decided not to do, so, after almost two months in Turkey I still don't have even a single word of Turkish. Seriously, I get by with merely my beguiling smile and a wee bit of mime. It's a good thing the Turks are so welcoming.
Having deemed myself well enough that I could no longer justify lounging in my lovely little off the beaten path hostel I launched back into tourist mode and made the trek to Canakkale from whence to visit the sites of the battlefields of Gallipoli and the ruins of Troy. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to find a boat at some point and go crewing, and, if I'm not careful the sailing season will be over, but currently I'm still enthralled with Turkey and don't feel finished with it just yet.) I take a perverse amount of pleasure at using local public transit, which, coupled with my perverse refusal to learn the language is not always easy. This leg however was all roses. I hoofed it to the ferry station and crossed the Marmara Sea to Bandirma and I knew that from there I would need to get a bus to go to Canakkale. Lonely Planet had pre-warned me that the bus station was far from the ferry docks and that taxis cost $30. Getting off the ferry there was indeed a sea of yellow taxis waiting, but I used my eagle eyes to spot a few white minibuses, called dolmuses, and headed to them instead. All I had was the name of my final destination written on a piece of paper but, because I knew what he was going to say, I completely understood the driver when he explained I had to take his bus to the 'otogar' and then another bus from there. It was quite obvious you were supposed to have tokens for the dolmus but when I held out my hand with too many coins in it and a huge smile on my face the driver quite cheerfully took the right ones from my palm and slipped a token from his pocket into the slot. And, when I got to the bus station, I learnt that the next bus to Canakkale was leaving in 15 minutes. Transportation win. Who needs language?
Part 2: Troy
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| Ruins of Troy. |
The site where the legendary city of Troy once stood, on a limestone ridge close to the Dardanelle - the narrow strait leading from the Aegean towards the Black Sea and separating Europe from Asia - has been occupied and abandoned repeatedly for at least 5000 years. There isn't much there today except rubble, there hasn't been for years, but its allure is real. Even during the height of the Roman Empire, when everyone literate had read the Iliad and tourists flocked to see the place where Paris had fought for Helen, tour guides had to tell stories to make up for the lack of real ruins. Its rediscovery by the infamous Schliemann, who dynamited his way through the site and found and stole a cache of gold jewelry, is a story in itself. Troy's popularity as a tourist destination has been helped throughout the ages by a variety of celebrities; Alexander the Great is said to have stopped by and raced nude up the hill in 334 on his way to conquer the East and Brad Pitt is considered a demigod by locals for renewing international interest in the idea of adding it to one's itinerary. There are various replica large wooden horses scattered around but the real one, from Brad's 2004 movie set, stands prominently displayed on the waterfront boardwalk in Canakkale.
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| The real wooden horse. |
Part 3: Travesty AKA the Battlefields of Gallipoli
Just as it had been for thousands of years, the Dardanelle was considered strategic enough to fight for in 1915. The Allies likely would have succeeded in getting control of it too except for two things: firstly ocean currents pulled their boats further north than expected so that they landed in the predawn darkness below jagged hills rather than on the intended beaches and, secondly, Mustafa Kemal, then a minor officer, later to be known as Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, correctly guessed what was about to happen, disobeyed his orders, and held off the Allied troops long enough for Ottoman reinforcements to arrive. Both sides dug in. Nine months of bloodshed followed. Over 100 000 young men lost their lives. The number of casualties including dead and wounded topped 500 000. (Apologies if this summary seems blase, it is not intended as such.)
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| Graveyard 57 of 94. |
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| At lone pine graveyard the names of those presumed dead but without a known burial site are engraved in a wall... a long wall. |
Today the whole peninsula is a national historic park. There is a state of the art museum. There are also 94 graveyards and memorials. Too many to comprehend. Ataturk's famous words of reconsiliation resonate throughout, "To us there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets... You, the mothers, who sent your sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom. After having lost their lives in this land, they have become our sons as well."
Part 4: Last thoughts
The bloodshed at Troy and again years later at Gallipoli, which are for all intensive purposes the same place, are obviously only two of the many times through the millennia that young men's blood has fertilized this soil. My father left home at 18, spent 5 years overseas during WW2, and returned home whole. But might not have. That I am able to faff about freely jumping on and off ferries, and moreover, that I was able to send my sons off to school when they were 18, as opposed sending them off to fight for their country... I do not have the words for this. I only wish I knew what I could do in the years I have left to ensure that my grandsons, and theirs, will also be so lucky.
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| One of far far too many tombstones marking the final resting place of teens. |
