Dur Yolcu Memorial, Kilitbahir, Gallipoli
Dur yolcu! Stop wayfarer!…
- Ferry leaving Çanakkale to cross the Narrows for Eceabat, Gallipoli.
In the hillside above Çanakkale, visible from the Dardanelles ferry gathering speed as it heads for Eceabat on the Gallipoli peninsula, is a large red memorial with the words:
18 Mart 1915
That simple date is a reminder of the day in 1915 when a combined fleet of British and French battleships sailed up the Dardanelles and shelled the Turkish forts and gun emplacements of the Asiatic and European shores. Çanakkale itself suffered greatly from this bombardment. The American journalist George Schreiner, who was present, described the shelling as ‘frightful’. The earth shook, buildings collapsed and the old Greek quarter of the town was a ‘roaring inferno’. The Allied warships, with the loss of three battleships and a fourth badly damaged, eventually pulled back. For many years it was widely held that the Turks, after this monumental attack, were low on shells but historian Tim Travers has this to say:
… some historians since, have asserted that a second immediate attempt at forcing the Straits by de Robeck [the British admiral in charge of the Allied warships] and the Allied fleet would have succeeded because the forts were out of heavy ammunition. It appears … that … information on a shortage of Turkish ammunition was incorrect, and it is clear the Turkish forts and artillery had plenty of ammunition.
[Tim Travers, Gallipoli 1915, Stroud, 2002, p.32]
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- The ‘18 Mart 1915’ Memorial (18 March 1915) on the hillside above Çanakkale.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the Turks remember 18 March 1915 as a great national victory, the day the Allied warships were turned back by the bravery and steadfastness of the Turkish gunners of the Dardanelles forts.
Further away, across the straits and also easily visible from the ferry, is the other great ancient fort guarding the Narrows – Kilitbahir (Lock of the Sea). Above the fort, and on a hilltop to the right, is a huge figure of a 1915 Turkish soldier carved in white upon the hillside. In one hand he holds a rifle while his other arm is outstretched towards a Turkish inscription:
Dur yolcu!
Bilmeden gelip bastýöýn,
Bu toprak, bir devrin battýöý yerdir.
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- The Dur Yolcu Memorial on the hillside above Kilitbahir, Gallipoli, seen from across the Narrows at Çanakkale.
These words of the Turkish poet, Necmettin Halil Onan, have been loosely translated into English in two well-known and excellent English language guidebooks to the battlefields of Gallipoli in this way:
Traveller halt!
The soil you tread
Once witnessed the end of an era.
What does this mean? Does it suggest that the defeat by the Turks of the Allied
armies and navies of 1915 ushered in a new ‘era’? That the ‘era’ represented
by the old colonial empires of Britain and France was somehow brought to an end
here at the hands of ordinary Turkish soldiers? Such an interpretation
seems plausible until the whole of Necmettin’s poem is looked at and a
rather different translation of his words considered. Here is the whole poem
in the only translation available on the internet as yet:
- Hole in the interior wall of Çimenlik Castle, Çanakkale, made by a shell from the British Dreadnought battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth.
Stop wayfarer! Unbeknownst to you this ground
You come and tread on, is where an epoch lies;
Bend down and lend your ear, for this silent mound
Is the place where the heart of a nation sighs.
To the left of this deserted shadeless lane
The Anatolian slope now observe you well;
For liberty and honour, it is, in pain,
Where wounded Mehmet laid down his life and fell.
This very mound, when violently shook the land,
When the last bit of earth passed from hand to hand,
And when Mehmet drowned the enemy in flood,
Is the spot where he added his own pure blood.
Think, the consecrated blood and flesh and bone
That make up this mound, is where a whole nation,
After a harsh and pitiless war, alone
Tasted the joy of freedom with elation.
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- The Dur Yolcu Memorial on the hillside above Kilitbahir, Gallipoli.
Now the lines on the hillside make more sense. Necmettin commands us to stop
and consider the ‘mound’ of earth that is the Gallipoli peninsula.
Here beats the heart of a whole ‘epoch’ or period of Turkish national
life. It was here in 1915 that the ordinary Turkish soldier – Mehmet – laid
down his life for the freedom of Turkey, paid indeed for that freedom with his
own blood. Presumably Necmettin’s poem is as well known in Turkey as a
hymn of patriotic praise to those who defended Turkey from the invaders of 1915
as Rupert Brook’s ‘The Soldier’ was to former generations of
British Empire and Dominion schoolchildren. For Turks it is only necessary to
quote the first two lines on this hillside memorial for the sentiments of the
whole poem to be recalled. Stop wayfarer, remember the price Turkey
paid for victory at the Dardanelles - 87,000 dead and over 164,000 wounded.
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- This photograph shows the size of the shells that were hurled at the Turkish forts of the Dardanelles by the Royal Navy Dreadnought battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth. [AWM G00195]
- Shipping in the Narrows of the Dardanelles between Çanakkale and Kilitbahir.