Another Visit to Gallipoli
Trip Start
Feb 08, 2008
1
85
126
Trip End
Sep 11, 2009
Canakkale,
Turkish Aegean Coast,
Turkey
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thinking it might take all day to get there, I set out early from my pension in Tevfikiye. The mini-bus to Canakkale makes a stop just across the street from the Varol Pansiyon where I have been staying. I caught the 7:00am ride. It's usually fairly loaded with students.
The ride into Canakkale is in the order of 30 to 45 minutes. I walked to the ferry landing and jumped aboard the ferry waiting to cross to Kilitbahir. There was only about a 10 minute wait for the leaving.
(For anyone just tuning in, I have written before about the Turkish Travel Pixies. They are little sprites of my imagination. None that I have actually had visual sightings of, I hasten to add. But I imagine them--or her--as like Tinker Bell; with a magic wand that sprinkles good luck pixie dust on travelers in Turkey . Well, me at least. Pay attention in this episode, and the next two).
Most of the passengers, I assume, are working commuters on their way to a job somewhere in the Gallipoli Peninsula, Eceabat (e-JAY-a-bat) or Gelibolu most likely. There were several mini-buses awaiting at the far side. I neglected to look at the signage on the single bus pointing in the direction I was going, and so after walking along for a spell--just trying to clear the inhabited area--I neglected to see it approach and pass me by.
But, after a pleasant enough walk in the warming day, as the fog burned off, I was hitching and was picked up by a young fellow.
Canakkale: Early Morning Ferry
He spoke a few words of English, but mainly spoke to me in Turkish. And, from which I gathered the following: He was fairly recently out of his Turkish Army service. He had been in an anti-PKK (Kurdish separatist movement) combat unit in far, far southeastern Turkey, the region of Hakkari. I just checked the LP on this area. The 2007 edition says things had cooled there and it was a highly worthwhile place to visit. Well, this ex-soldier said that it is all fine for me to be walking around here in the nice safe northwest, but as an American I wouldn't want to be in the southeast just now. Things have recently heated up, the Turkish army loosing many young soldiers. He was, I believe, describing to me seeing his comrade loose a leg below mid-thigh as a result of stepping on a mine. And, he said, the PKK don't like Americans. (The U.S., in seeking to crawl back into the good graces of the Turks, have been supplying intelligence on the PKK to them.)
The young man took me right up to the base of my goal for the day, the Canakkale Martyrs Memorial. It was about two hours and forty-five minutes since I stood on the corner outside my pension.
As I walked up the road to the memorial grounds I was greeted by the "guard dog?" And, if you want to call that a greeting.
I have repeatedly read of the crowds in the region on Anzac Day, April 25th. Along with others there are apparently thousands of Australian and New Zealand visitors to these various memorial sites to the Gallipoli Campaign.
Leaving Canakkale
On this day, as I arrived, I was a solitary visitor. I read the words of Kemal Atatürk, which usually don't fail to constrict my throat just a little, demonstrating him a victorious warrior, and a compassionate humanist of the Enlightenment: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 here 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.
Continuing on, I looked in on the also quiet and dignified French cemetery, then walked the crescent beach along Morto Bay, on the way to the village of Seddübahir.
On the sea edge of the village is the ruin of an Ottoman era castle. This castle received the first shots by the Allies in their start to the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War. And beyond the castle, the lighthouse at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. And, what adolescent boy could resist the effort to stand at the very tippy-tip-tip of such a geographical prominence?
Next was but to walk back up through the village, and start back. There certainly was not a sign of traffic. Nor, hardly a soul to be seen in the village for that matter. These are pretty much summer time places.
Nevertheless, a car, an SUV type, came, and I stuck out my thumb.
A Mutable Icon
They passed. They paused ahead adjacent to some folks harvesting olives. I assumed they were village friends, and had stopped to chat. The car moved on. I was thinking that now was finally the chance I have been looking for to photograph some folks harvesting olives. I had been wondering all through the summer, after seeing seemingly tens of thousands of olive trees, how olives were harvested. But before I got to the people beneath the tree, the car stopped again; and began backing up. A window came down and I was asked by the woman driver--in English--where I was going. I said to Kilitbahir. I was motioned into the back seat.
They were three retired people: the woman driver, her husband, and a good friend. The woman spoke quite fine English. She was a doctor, and she and her husband had a second home in the village, at which they liked to spend as much time as possible. But just then they were compelled for some reason to return to Istanbul. The woman said they had a daughter in the United States. She lived in Philadelphia, with her American boyfriend, but was a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Yale University. I said that was a long commute. Well, only for three or four of the days of the week, as she was also lecturing.
I said I was impressed.
The election of Barak Obama was favorably commented on. And we all agreed that the whole world was looking to him to make a huge difference.
They let me off at the ferry landing just as the ferry was arriving from Canakkale. After unloading and taking cars and people on from the European side, the ferry was on its way, crossing the Dardanelles back to Asia, within about 15 minutes.
Back in my room at the pension I switched on the tv to learn from the Turkish news of the death of the singer Odetta. Did the American tv news give any mention, I wondered.
