Kilitbahir and the Ramparts
Wildflowers sprout out of the cracks…
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- Kilitbahir, the ‘Lock of the Sea’, Gallipoli.
Directly across the Narrows of the Dardanelles, Çannakale Boğazi in Turkish, lies the magnificent fortress of Kilitbahir, the Lock of the Sea. Like Çimenlik Castle at Çanakkale, Kilitbahir was built by Sultan Mehmet II, the Conqueror, in 1452. The two fortresses guarded the Narrows from any fleet coming from Europe to assist Constantinople (Istanbul) then under siege by Mehmet.
On the road south of Kilitbahir are a number of old earthen gun ramparts and
concrete ammunition bunkers such as the Rumeli Hamidye Rampart and the large
and impressive Namazgah Rampart. They were built in the 1890s and
formed in 1915 part of the defence system of forts, ramparts and mines set up
to prevent foreign naval passage of the straits. The great heavy cannon which
were sited here are long gone but the gun positions are still visible and one
can imagine, on 18 March 1915, the shells being conveyed up from the ammunition
bunkers to keep the guns firing during the Allied naval attack.
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- Corporal Seyit Memorial, Kilitbahir, Gallipoli.
Just south of the Namazgah Rampart is a reminder of the struggle here on 18 March as the Allied warships shelled the forts and ramparts. Facing out to sea is a great bronze statue, placed here in 1992, of Corporal Seyit from the village of Edremit-Havran. Seyit, stripped to the waist, carries in his arms a 275 kilogram shell for his gun battery at the Rumeli Mecidiye Rampart. Seyit, a timber cutter, was apparently famous in his village for his great strength and capable of walking around with a log under each arm. At Seyit’s battery on 18 March the machinery which brought the shells to the guns broke down, so he personally carried them. The particular shell in the statue is probably meant to be the last the battery had on that day when Seyit took it to the gun and fired it himself. Supposedly, it hit and sank the British battleship HMS Ocean, but what actually crippled the warship may have been one of Captain Hakki Bey’s mines from the Nusret. Accounts vary, but the Corporal Seyit statue is certainly a tribute to the Turkish gunners who stood firm against the shelling of the Allied warships on a number of occasions in February and March 1915. Australian journalist Les Carlyon has evocatively described this area:
Nature is reclaiming the forts now. The grey stones that once walled them in are strewn about and coated with moss. Wildflowers sprout out of the cracks in the gun emplacements. The underground magazines and tunnels are intact. These walls, six feet thick, are forever. The magazines smell of mould and wild thyme.
- Ammunition bunkers and gun emplacements at the ramparts south of Kilitbahir, Gallipoli.
[Les Carlyon, Gallipoli, Sydney, 2001, pp.73-74]
