Pt2 - 3: ANZAC

The bus to Çanakkale (Chan-ack-ally) was a pleasant surprise, a state-of-the-art Mitsubishi cruiser with luxury reclining aircraft seats, spacious overhead lockers, huge panorama windows, air-con and a two-man crew – the driver and a conductor/attendant. It was fully booked, but once we settled in we could’ve been the only travellers on the bus. We were studying the route on our map when I heard something I suddenly realised I hadn’t heard for forty-six days, an Australian accent coming from a few seats further back. It was inevitable of course, since we were about to undertake the compulsory pilgrimage to Gallipoli, but I caught myself feeling mildly peeved Tess and I weren’t the only Aussies. I also caught myself thinking it was amazing we hadn’t come across any other Australians in the five days we spent traipsing around Istanbul.

We nosed silently out of the Otogar, or Central Bus Station, at precisely 9:45 and within twenty minutes were on the outskirts of the city. Here the historical architecture of Ottoman Istanbul gave way abruptly to high-rise subdivisions which seemed to have dropped onto the rolling rural landscape in one piece. Otherwise identical, they were distinguished only by garish colour schemes completely at odds with the green, close-cropped hillsides.

The stark contrast between the elegantly old and the brutalist new got me thinking about some of the other enigmas that make Turkey interesting and unusual from a foreigner’s perspective. Fashion-wise, the Turks eschew traditional Muslim modesty and seem instead to be trapped in a time warp from the 50s and 60s; lots of fringes on their garments, leather jackets, and not-quite-paisley swirls of bold colour. Thanks to Atatürk, the country is also a politico-religious enigma, the world’s only secular Muslim republic, and tomorrow we would learn something about Atatürk that only a dedicated student of the modern Turkish state would understand.

We made good time along the northern coastline of the Sea of Mamara. Our charming attendant, an older Turkish bloke with the compulsory moustache and a lump in the middle of his forehead that looked like he’d been whacked with a baseball bat when he was a kid, served us bikkies and Fanta and misted us with eau-de-cologne from an atomiser to refresh us during the journey. It was better service than some of the airlines we’ve flown with.

The countryside was an arcadia of rolling farmlands all the shades of green. The gunmetal sea stretched away to our left. On the climb through the high passes it snowed lightly, and as the Asian shore of Mamara loomed far across the water to the south we could see snow dusting the distant mountains. Small flocks of sheep, tended by shepherds with their dogs, appeared regularly along the roadside. We arrived in Eceabat via Gelibolou in time for the 3pm ferry and by 4 were installed in the Anzac Hotel in Çanakkale. The small balcony of 201 gave out over the clock tower square meters from the waterfront and we could just make out the Dardanelles in the distance.

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It’s hard to be humorous about Gallipoli, so I won’t.

Cold beneath a leaden sky, the weather was entirely consonant with a battlefield tour. Enough has been written elsewhere about the landings at Gallipoli and the months of futile fighting that followed, and it goes without saying the whole fiasco was a criminal waste of lives. This is not the place to debate the pros and cons of war in general or the vain folly of WWI in particular, but I rode the 11am ferry back across to Eceabat to join our fellow pilgrims for the day with mixed feelings. I’ve not done the research to find out why, but there is no direct ANZAC connection in my lineage and, while I’m not a pacifist and recognise that war is an occasional necessary evil, I’ve always declined to engage with the celebrations and commemorations of ANZAC Day. On the other hand, honour to whom honour is due; I see the young souls who lost their lives in the conflict as victims of a cynical and ruthless leadership who exploited their misplaced loyalties for political ends. They had the misfortune to inhabit an ideological landscape that glorified war and ennobled sacrifice to a corrupt imperial authority.

The minibus pulled away from RSL House with two Kiwis and fourteen Aussies aboard. I flirted with the idea of pretending to be Hungarian just to mess things up a bit but the Aussie flag on my day pack foiled that plan.

Our first stop was the Kaba Tepe museum. It was closed, but the visit wasn’t entirely wasted because the marble forecourt offered sweeping views of the ANZAC battlefields from Brighton Beach in the south to Chunuk Bair on a hill to the north. A sharp wind sliced in off the water down below.

Hüseyin Uluarslan, our guide, was an animated fellow with racoon-like features, a clipped grey moustache and something of the thespian about him. Short of stature, he wore a black leather jacket, formal trousers, an outsized black beret that made him look like a walking toadstool and a heavy scarf against the cold. He was a scholar of the campaigns and claimed to have had an uncle at Gallipoli; possible, though given his age I was sceptical. He conducted the tour with all the gravitas, dignity and respect due the occasion and treated us like honoured guests.

From up here at Kaba Tepe the scene of our cultural birth looked windswept and desolate. The peninsula had been ravaged by wild fires three years ago which had reduced it to a cover of coarse coastal heath punctuated thinly with pines that looked like they’d all been struck by lightning. Lone Pine and the Chunuk Bair monuments were clearly visible at the top of the bare ridge some kilometres away.

Despite the wind on the highlands, down at sea level all was strangely calm and peaceful. The clear, clean water lapped gently on the coloured pebbles along the narrow beach at Anzac Cove. It took a will of the imagination to superimpose the chaos and slaughter of ANZAC on this serene scene. The only suggestion of turbulence was the bank of bruised storm cloud gathered offshore.

We assembled at the Ari Burnu cemetery where Hüseyin related the story of the landings replete with dramatic pauses and practiced modulation. The inscription on the ANZAC memorial carries Atatürk’s own words at the original dedication of the site during the very first organised ANZAC tour in 1934:

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace.

There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours.

You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace after having lost their lives on this land.

They have become our sons as well.

It’s interesting to me, and speaks volumes for Atatürk, that Ari Burnu is the only monument in the world to honour enemy soldiers; even more interesting when you realise the first memorial to Turkey’s own fallen wasn’t established until two years later, in 1936.

After Hüseyin delivered his set piece he withdrew into the background and left us each to our thoughts. We wandered in small groups among the carefully tended graves. There was no urgency, no pressure, no schedule. Some went down to the water’s edge, anointed themselves from the sea and turned to face the hills and gullies in what was plainly a spiritual observance for them.

On our way up the escarpment towards Chunuk Bair we paused briefly at the monument to the Turkish soldier who saved the life of a wounded English officer who later became Lord Casey and the 16^th Governor-General of Australia. At Chunuk Bair itself we broke for lunch and wandered off into the pines with our rolls and water.

The weather had closed in and up here on the high ground a bitter wind again scythed through the electrocuted trees. I’m not sure if the solemnity had got into my head, but I swear the sound was the sighing of dead souls. We lowered ourselves into a reconstructed trench to escape the wind and tried to imagine what it might have been like in the chaos of battle…and failed.

Things felt a bit surreal for the next few hours. As Hüseyin described the turning point in the battle for the Dardanelles, how Atatürk intercepted the fleeing Ottoman/Turkish soldiers and commanded them to fix their bayonets, a flurry of snow swept through us in an eerie echo of the conditions at this very place 82 years ago. Like a stage device, it synchronised beautifully with Hüseyin’s delivery.

We moved on to no-man’s land via The Nek where the trenches are preserved in their original tortuous condition. With the trenches and tunnels as backdrops, Hüseyin told the story of the gentlemen’s war. To paraphrase him: A young ANZAC from Western Australia began one night to sing in a beautiful voice. When he had finished there was applause from the Turkish trenches only metres away and a Turkish lad sang in reply. This continued every night for some time, until there was a bayonet charge. The following night the Australian trenches were silent, no song came. The Turkish boy never sang again. ANZAC myth or no, Hüseyin had a way of bringing a lump to your throat almost against your will.

I was first back to the bus after inspecting the monument to the Turkish fallen, so while we waited for the others I asked Hüseyin why Gallipoli seems as sacred to the Turks as it is to Australians.

“Our victory here is the birth of our present Republic. If we had failed, and we very nearly did, there would be no modern Turkey. Atatürk saved Turkey and proved himself the man to lead us into the future. Without Atatürk no defence, no Turkey. He is my second prophet.”

The memory of Atatürk is everywhere deified here, and Hüseyin was genuinely saddened as he described the great man’s, the Ghazi’s, addiction to raki (a drink related to ouzo and absinthe), his descent into alcoholism and his lonely death in Dolmabahçe in 1938 at just 57. I asked him if the gathering power of the fundamentalist Reefah Party threatened the Ghazi’s secular vision for Turkey. Flicking a dismissive hand he sneered, “There are many who would be angry with me for saying it, but they are nothing!”

At Lone Pine Hüseyin conducted a solemn wreath laying ceremony with a bunch of flowers he’d brought from Eceabat and a tape recording of the Last Post on a little boom box. We observed a minute’s silence and he recited the Ode: “They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.”

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Back in Çanakkale we ate in the infernally named Aussie and Kiwi Restaurant because it was warm, not because the host called me “mate”. A wonky tape of Cold Chisel’s Bow River on loop reminded me of Scott’s Tavern back home in Bridgetown. It was time to leave Australia again!

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From the Quirky Turkey file: Despite the historical, spiritual and political significance of Gallipoli to the birth of modern Turkey there are no museums, memorials or shrines to it outside the Dardanelles; not in Çanakkale, not even in Istanbul.

Next time: The Mona Lisa of Bergama, Operation Time Management and Ephesus