Gallipoli and the Anzacs

In recent years, the Gallipoli area has become an important tourist attraction.

The Gallipoli Peninsula Peace Park was established in 1973. It covers 330 square kilometres (33,000 hectares) at the southern end of the Gallipoli Peninsula on the European side of the Dardanelles. The peninsula is an 80 km long finger of land that is only 5 km wide at its narrowest.

Included in the area are archaeological sites dating back to 4000 BC, an extensive range of sunken ships, guns, trenches, forts, bastions and other World War One-related artefacts together with Turkish, Australian, New Zealand, English and French war graves and memorials. The area is intimately associated with Turkish national consciousness through the actions here of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Modern Turkey.

In recent times, there have been several controversies that have also focussed the minds of many people around the world on what this important and unique area should be.

On 25 July 1994, there was a forest fire that consumed about 4000 hectares of forest, mostly Red Pine, which defoliated the Anzac war graves area. National and international campaigns to re-afforest the area sensitised authorities and public opinion on landscaping interventions in historic sites and focussed discussion on ways to better display battlefields, war graves and monuments in the area.

Also in 1994, the building proposal to build the Dardanelles Suspension Bridge focussed public discussion on the future of the area and its environment. Currently 10,000 or more people live in the area, along with the town of Eceabat, which has over 5000 inhabitants and whose municipal boundaries cut the park in two. This has led to continued traffic problems with local and visitor traffic intermingling.

Traffic is exceptionally busy around April 25, Anzac Day, and parking problems have yet to be solved effectively. In 2000, more than 12,000 people gathered for the Dawn Service on the morning of the 85th anniversary of the Anzac landing. For comparison, in 1995, the area was visited by 14,000 overseas tourists (80% young Australians and New Zealanders, 7% British) throughout the the entire year.

As visits to the battlefield areas are not registered nor subject to payment of fees, it is difficult to gather full data about tourism. There are, however four places where fees are paid for visits. In 1996, well over 100,000 people entered these facilities. Groups of residents are at work developing different types of tourist attractions such as sports facilities, camping, nature-trekking, botanical gardens, sea tours, fishing, diving and undersea photography to broaden the experience of the visitors to Gallipoli.