Turkey’s War

One of the interesting things about visiting the Gallipoli peninsula was seeing the many different ways in which the battle gets appropriated by Turkish nationalism. The victory of the Ottoman army is seen as the first step on the path of independence, the defeat of the allied forces here making way for the defeat of invading and occupying armies elsewhere. Of course, the battle in Gallipoli was fought well before the independence struggle was ever launched (it ended in 1916, whereas the War of Independence began only in 1919 — the precise date, as every Turk learns, is the day Mustafa Kemal arrived in Samsun, May 16 1919), and was a victory for the Ottoman Empire. The Sultanate was abolished in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal, who was commanding the troops in the independence struggle, and with that came the end of the Empire. The Republic itself very pointedly blamed all the country’s ills on the corrupt, degenerate Ottomans, so why the Empire’s victory is celebrated with so much emotion, pomp and vigour is an open question, but hey, that’s probably just nitpicking.

Mustafa Kemal’s statue at the sight where he commanded the 57th Infantry Regiment against the ANZAC troops. It was also here that he was hit by shrapnel but saved by the pocket watch he kept in his breast pocket.

What really connects Gallipoli with the War of Independence is the figure of Mustafa Kemal. Lieutent-Colonel Kemal was the front-line commander of the 19th Division and was instrumental to the Ottoman success at Gallipoli. Of particular importance was the counter-attack he led against the invading ANZAC troops in April of 1915. It’s the stuff of legend in Turkey. Kemal told the 57th Infantry Regiment —

I do not order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places.

Every soldier of the regiment was either killed in action or wounded. Today, there is no 57th regiment in the Turkish army as a sign of respect. While Kemal was watching the fighting, he was also hit by a piece of shrapnel but saved by the pocket watch he kept in his breast pocket. The site where he was hit is marked by his statue and the area where the battle is fought a site of pilgrimage for Turks. While we were there, we saw people stand in front of the graves of the soldiers who died here and pray.

One of the many legends about the Turkish flag, and its brilliant red date back to Gallipoli. It is said the battle fields had become red with the blood of the soldiers. When the moon came out it reflected in the pool of blood. The flag represents this – a sign of respect and remembrance for the soldiers who died fighting for this country. It’s an incredibly moving story, at least for someone like me, but then I have a soft spot for this kind of Kemalist nationalism, but no one seems to remember that those soldiers were not fighting for Turkey, but for the Empire and its Sultan. Small detail.

The ‘Dur Yolcu!’ sign seen from Çanakkale.

In Gallipoli, the memory of the battle is everywhere. This is, of course, necessarily the case because of the very physical reminders of the campaign — the trenches, the graves, empty pill boxes, shrapnel and weaponry that are still discovered today — but there has also been a concerted effort to memorialise the battle. In Çanakkale, the city on the Asian side of the Dardanelles, a massive sign has been carved onto a hillside that is visible as one crosses the straits or from the European shore. It simply says in red ’18 Mart 1915′. That was the date the allies started their naval assault on the straits. The local university in the town is also called 18th March University. Near Kilitbahir on the European shore of the straits a similar sign has the following words

Dur yolcu!
Bilmeden gelip bastığın,
Bu toprak, bir devrin battığı yerdir.

The words are a fragment from a poem by Necmettin Halil Onan. Stop traveller, it says, this land that you unknowingly tread on once witnessed the end of an era. The complete verse is translated along these lines –

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.

Busts of the commanders of the Ottoman Army on Eceabat’s waterfront.

Turkey paid a huge price for its victory in Gallipoli. According to one estimate some 87,000 dead and 1,64,000 wounded. It is actually incredibly moving to see that the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought there, from all the commanders of the army to the ordinary soldiers and even the enemy, have been memorialised and have not been forgotten. Many of the Turks involved in the Gallipoli campaign — not just Kemal but also other military figures like Cemal Gürsel, Fevzi Çakmak, İsmail Cevat Çobanlı, Fahrettin Altay among others — played major roles in the War of Independence and the early Republican period. It might be easy to draw inference that they were fighting in Gallipoli for Turkey, but this battle was not about that.

The Sky

We visited Gallipoli over the weekend. It was an amazing trip — incredibly beautiful, incredibly moving. It had rained heavily the night before we went to look at the battlefield. The sea was a variety of blues. The sky was ever-changing.

In Istanbul, the weather and the sky is extremely changeable. I think this has to do with its location on the bosphorous. You can literally see the clouds moving. Once, on a bus ride up the bosphorous it seemed that the bus was in a race with the dark rain clouds that were quickly advancing to the Black Sea. It was similar in Gallipoli, which is also located on a strait. The clouds moved and changed colour quickly — from threatening dark grey to cottony white through wich the sun shone. In Gallipoli, where the traces of the War are everywhere, even looking at the sky called back to the soldiers who fought here. In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell talks about how important the sky was in the soldiers’ imagination.

To be in the trenches was to experience an unreal, unforgettable enclosure and constraint, as well as a sense of being unoriented and lost. One saw two things only: the walls of an unlocalised, undifferentiated earth and the sky above. … What a survivor of the Salient remembers fifty years later are the walls of dirt and ceiling of sky, and his eloquent optative cry rises as if he were still imprisoned there: “To be out of this present, ever-present , eternally present misery, this stinking world of sticky, trickly earth ceilinged by a strip of threatening sky.” As the only visible theater of variety, the sky becomes all-important. It was the sight of the sky, almost alone, that had the power to persuade a man that he was not already lost in a common grave. 

Fussell quotes the diary of a soldier:

Was it Ruskin who said that the upper and more glorious half of Nature’s pageant goes unseen by the majority of people? … Well, the trenches have altered that. Shutting off the landscape, they compel us to observe the sky; and when it is a canopy of blue flecked with white clouds …, and when the earth below is a shell-sticken waste, one looks up with delight, recalling perhaps the days when, as a small boy, one lay on the garden lawn at home counting the clouds as they passed.

Istanbul’s Stars

I am really not a cat person. I come down strictly on the side of dogs. For the most part, I have as little sympathy for cats as they do for anyone. I will be perfectly nice to them and can enjoy their company, but think it is pointless to have any deeper attachment with them. Still, even I have to admit that the Istanbul cats are all sorts of fabulous. They are full of character and the city is their fiefdom. It is nothing if not fun to watch them run amok all over it.

Today, I attended a symposium at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University on the occasion of the launch of Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. Pamuk gave the closing address. While he was speaking a gorgeous black cat with deep green eyes strolled on to the stage and plonked herself (?) right in the centre demanding everyone’s attention. She walked around, stretched a bit, walked into the audience and then back again on stage with all eyes, including Pamuk’s, on her. Seemingly happy with all that attention, she decided it would only be good form to let the author have his stage again. It was kind of awesome.

Laleler

Wise words

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boast not thyself of tomorrow for thou

Knowest not what a day may bring forth

Indian Soldiers in Istanbul

Yesterday I visited the English cemetery in the Asian neighbourhood of Haydaypaşa. It required a bit of hunting  and perseverance (which seems to be a prerequisite to enter any non-Turkish cemetery in the city). I was eventually helped out by one of the men at a restaurant at the Haydarpaşa station, who led us across the train tracks (which had signs along the lines of ‘Demiryolunun hatlarını geçmek tehlikeli ve yasaktır’  — crossing the railway tracks is dangerous and forbidden. It is always dangerous AND forbidden to do certain things here), up a small hill and helped get the cemetery open.

The Haydarpaşa English cemetery was initially used as a cemetery for the soldiers who died in the Crimean War. The Selimiye Barracks, which are nearby, were where Florence Nightingale famously treated and cared for the Crimean war wounded. It is also where a large number of the British community of Istanbul and Smyrna (now Izmir) are buried. After the First World War, a large number of British Prisoners of War who had been captured on the Turkish front were also buried here.

It was mostly for the last reason that I visited. I have been interested in trying to find out more about Indian soldiers who found themselves fighting on the Mesopotamian front. Mesopotamia saw the largest influx of Indian soldiers. Over the course of the many campaigns, close to 675,000 Indian fighting troops as well as hundreds of thousands of auxiliary troops  were involved in Mesopotamia. When General Townshend’s troops surrendered in April 1916, the POWs were marched all the way from Mesopotamia to POW camps in Turkey. Most of those who survived probably ended up at the POW camps in Afyonkarahissar (the name ‘black poppy castle’ always makes me chuckle). Apparently, there are still some memorial stones in that region of Anatolia, but most of the Indian POWs are remembered here in Istanbul.

Shameless Plug

A piece I wrote about the Ottoman Bank Museum was published recently. Go here to read it 

On the ferry (I)

Boğazı geçmek

I probably have the best commute to work in the world. It involves taking a ferry, and crossing continents.

One of the first times I visited Istanbul, I stayed on the Asian side in Kadıköy and crossing the Bosphorous was probably the best part of my day. I knew that if I moved to the Asian side, the ferry rides to and from work would be lovely, but was still worried about the length of the commute. I really should thank E. for convincing me otherwise (“I told you so!”, she said the other day, when I said how much I love my daily ferry rides). From Üsküdar, the European shore is very close. Somewhere between eight to twelve minutes. That is actually a boon in a city where the traffic seems to get exponentially worse by the day. As they say, in Istanbul ALWAYS take the ferry.

Of course, it’s not the ease of the commute (or not just) but the beauty of it that is so wonderful. When I was not staying near the Bosphorous, the very sight of it would make me squeal with glee. I now see it every single day and my joy at the sight of the water does not seem to have diminished. One of the wonders of taking the ferry every single day (or even just seeing the Bosphorous from my house) is the realisation of just how beautiful it always is. It is not the same everyday, of course, but it is like staring at a beautiful picture postcard every single time. Mükemmel.

Last week, I decided I should take my camera with me on my daily commute. I carried my tiny point-and-shoot and rather than take photos of the shoreline, I ended up with a memory card full of photos of my fellow commuters. I think they all enjoy their commute as much as I do. There is a certain sakin-ness that permeates each Bosphorous boat ride, everyone disconnecting from the world slightly. Taking those ten minutes to stare out at the strait and the sea and enjoy the view, even if it is in-between phone calls, text messages and conversations.

Yellow

The Pera Museum has an exhibition on titled Sultans, Merchants, Painters: The Early Years of Turkish-Dutch Relations. The absolute best thing about the exhibition was the colour of the walls. So yellow!!