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In Which It's All Rather Humbling

October 14, 2008 by Mike

Gaziköy

Gallipoli.

The remains of 36,000 Commonwealth soldiers lie in 31 cemetaries.

I don't know if anyone counted the number of Turkish dead.

I rode down to Anzac Cove. New Zealand is perhaps my favourite country .. with my favourite people.. in the world... outside this trip. My best friend and his wife emigrated to Australia (I know, I know.. some best friend *he* turned out to be..) So allow me to wallow in a certain Antipodean melancholy on their behalves.

Anzac Cove is a blink-and-you'd-miss-it indentation in the western shore of the Gallipoli peninsula. It's just.. small. It wouldn't warrant a second glance but for its bloody history. A stony beach, at the bottom of a steep-ish hill of coarse, stiff, dense, tall scrub. A couple of hundred metres inland, and a couple of hundred metres above sea level, cliffs dominate the scene. And there's the rub. The Turkish army were there. The landings that were supposed to take them by surprise were a shambles and the upshot was that the Allied troops were trapped on the very edge of the land they had come to conquer. Objectives for the first hours of the campaign were never met and it took eight months and many, many deaths before they were evacuated.

What's there now? Ari Burnu Cemetery, Shrapnel Valley Cemetery, Plugges Plateau Cemetery, Beach Cemetery -- some of these plots are a stone's throw from each other. Lawdy knows what actually was thrown about these sad acres. I'm guessing the cemeteries were started during the early days of the campaign, so the graves lie where the men fell. High in the hills, the glimpse of a Turkish memorial, the red flag forever fluttering in memory of their dead -- and forever a reminder of the military importance of holding the high ground.

Well, Ari Burnu and Beach cemeteries are literally on the beach. So the men buried there died within seconds of landing -- those who weren't picked out and killed on the boats and barges that brought them from the other side of the world to die far from home and hearth. It's hugely moving. It is also obscene.

Today, Anzac Cove is patrolled by fishing boats close to shore, and on land by Australian and Kiwi backpackers ferried down from Istanbul in the back of coughing minibuses. For whom Gallipoli represents one of the founding stories of their respective countries. But here's the thing -- this campaign also gave birth to modern Turkey.

Atatürk is the father of modern Turkey: I suspect I'm going to see an awful lot of him in the next few days. He led the military defence of Gallipoli and from this famous victory developed the character, the contacts, the confidence, the aura to come to control and change fundamentally an entire nation.

(Fear not, I want to try to understand the Atatürk phenomenon a little better before wittering on about it.)

(Although, while we're here, allow me to point you towards the text reproduced on this memorial at Anzac Cove -- and at several other points across the Gallipoli peninsula. I find his words very touching:

It's little more than 15 miles through forested back roads from Anzac Cove to the Helles Memorial at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula and the entrance to the Dardanelles, where British forces landed. In those terrible months, the two forces never managed the journey that takes me a sunny, happy half hour.

The British erected an enormous tower here to commemorate their dead. And, really, it's too big. A part of me curdles in embarrassment, of all things, when I come to pay my respects. That the Imperial forces should seek to dominate an area that is not only Turkish soil but a part of the heritage of the whole world, and all of human history.. the entrance to the Black Sea, a link between Asia and Europe across the millenia.. not just a scene of bravery and sacrifice and folly at one particular moment of 20th century sabre-rattling.

Turkey remembers its dead here too. I couldn't help noticing that the Turks who were visiting the Turkish graves at Cape Helles and the Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial, seemed to appreciate that I had walked over from the British memorial to see their own. Some of them were even more pleased to see me. There I was, leaning down to put the key in the ignition of the bike and set off. But when I stood up again, I was surrounded:

Err.. we are friends with Turkey at the moment, aren't we?

(These boys, these callow youth, were all conscripts, a loooooong long way from home. Only one of them spoke any English -- though they all shouted "Liverpool" or "Manchester United" loud enough when the conversation turned, inevitably, to football. This should worry me -- my Turkish has not come on in leaps and bounds these last 24 hours -- but when I told them I was heading for Istanbul, I might as well have said I was biking to the moon.

I'd swear a couple of them told me "Them there streets be paved with gold, 'um is, loike." I would, if I hadn't just pointed out that I can't speak the lingo.

They were so goggle-eyed at the thought of the big city (whose streetwise, educated, cosmopolitan sons are doubtless too canny to get caught up in military service) that they betrayed their own rural roots, perhaps a thousand miles from the heaving, sweaty fleshpots of big, bad Istanbul and all those wanton dancing girls.

Which reminded me.. I had to be on my way to Istanbul. To, err, see the mosques and palaces and museums and stuff, of course. *cough*

Coarse grasses and windswept trees line the seashore of the Dardanelles. The water is a strong, dark turqoise. With my new-ish camera I can focus clearly on the other shore.. the other continent. Houses and villages and towns and cities; factories and mosques and boatyards; Turkish flags-a-flutter; the same coarse grasses and windswept trees.

I don't spot anyone riding a bike around the coast of Europe, pausing to survey the European coast from the back of her or his trusty Bonnie.

And then, north of the town of Gelibolu, the road twists inland and by the time I switch back to the coast.. via what the map indicates is a 'minor road' and my backside confirms is 'really rather bumpy'.. the Dardanelles are behind me and I'm riding alongside the Sea of Marmara. Blimey!

The light starts to fade. I can go no further than a fishing village called Gaziköy, which luckily has the only hotel for miles either way.

I'm glad I got to see Gaziköy up close.

It's small, old and desperately poor. Some men are still fishing, from rowing boats no more than 20 metres from the shore. Others have gathered to watch, and smoke, and stare off into the distance. Away from the 'main' road.. you remember, the 'minor road'.. all potholes and rocks and dying tarmac.. the little streets of Gaziköy climb steeply up the sides of a low cliff. They are dirt roads, muddy and all but impassable in places. Others are little more than paths. Many houses are a steep, unsteady hike from the nearest road. This layout predates the car; hell, it probably predates the printing press.

Rubbish gathers in corners and sticks in the mud. There's a feeble street light every block or so. The houses are of brick and wood, fleshed out with the same should-be-temporary-but-lasts-a-lifetime breezeblock and corrugated iron and jerry can improvisation I've seen throughout Greece and Albania. Outside space is unloved; it's all junk heaps and dirt and feral cats. Windows are filthy and cracked. Scent of donkey. If there's a light on in any house, it's only in one room, but many of the houses are completely dark. Empty? I don't doubt it. Young people leave places like this.

I ate at the hotel. There wasn't a menu. It was a choice of 'fish' or 'meat' and if it had been any more descriptive I might have chosen to go hungry instead. (And.. of course.. the unknown meat was delicious.)

Beside the Seaside

In Which It's All Rather Humbling

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