Or coming down to earth...
When I was a boy, Turkey was mysterious and exotic place to me. They were not Christians there; they ate strange food; and wore strange clothes. There was something called a ‘bazaar’ where white women were kidnapped and sold into white slavery. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, or was it Errol Flynn, got into all sorts of trouble there with blood thirsty men with curved swords. There was a song on the radio that reminded me over and over again that ‘It’s Istanbul not Constantinople Now’, sung by The Four Lads, possibly the first ‘boy band’.
And of course every 25thof April we commemorated Anzac day, remembering Gallipoli; when the Aussie and New Zealand troops, as a result of a British cock-up perpetrated by Winston Churchill, fought without result then heroically withdrew from under the guns of the cleverly duped Turks, who when attacked, had suicidally thrown themselves at our Vickers machine guns, and when we counter-attacked, inhumanely mowed down our brave boys with their Maxims; as well as remembering all our other battles since. It was soon after the war with Japan had ended and the suicidal Turks and the suicidal Japanese were conflated in the media and our schoolboy minds.
Later when I was in high school, our school cadets alternated with cadets from Barker and Knox College to provide the catafalque party at the Hornsby Cenotaph on Anzac day. Comparisons would be odious, so our drill had to be perfect: present arms; rest on arms reversed; and so on. Our .303 rifles were well oiled, their barrels agleam against any inspection; so much harder to clean after blanks than live rounds. I hated blanks. Our bugler was note perfect for the last post and reveille. Our gaiters and belts were blanco’d khaki-green; our boots and brass shone like mirrors. If it came to another fight we would be ready. The Turks, the Japs and Hitler got a good kicking in the speeches.
By the time I was at university attitudes were softening towards the Turks. Quite a few had emigrated to Australia and Turkish food was exotic and trendy. We began to hear that they were brave soldiers protecting their homeland and the whole First World War was a terrible misunderstanding. Anzac day itself fell into temporary disrepute in the 60’s, as the war in Vietnam escalated, and was satirised in plays like ‘The One Day of the Year’.
Today it is commonly understood that troops that were sent to Gallipoli were the lucky ones as the chance of survival there was far higher than that of the troops who were sent to France to fight on the Somme or at places like Villers Bretonneux. Australia lost 8,709 dead and 19,441wounded at Gallipoli over eight months of fighting; in a fifth of this time at just one location, Pozières and Mouquet Farm, on the Western Front, three Australian divisions suffered 23,000 casualties including 6,800 deaths. Whichever way you say it the loss of life in World War One, the loss of the cream of Australian and New Zealand youth in particular, was appalling.
Turkey was still a mythical place when I discovered Ian Fleming’s James Bond books at University. They provided a welcome relief from more serious study. In ‘From Russia with Love’, James finds himself in Istanbul where even he is hesitant about going into the backstreets for fear of the evils in the shallows. But on the way there Bond is scared half to death because his plane flies through a lightning storm. We deduce that these are Fleming’s fears; not Bond’s.
So later, after I was working, and a colleague told me that Istanbul had been one of the most interesting and pleasant places he and his wife had visited, I thought them both amazingly brave.
The Trip
Of course I knew from history at school that Byzantium was the city on the Bosporus straits that the Emperor Constantine had adopted as the new capital of the Roman Empire; so that it became known as Constantinople. I also knew that the sacking of Constantinople is credited by some historians as the trigger for the Renaissance in Europe. On a trip years before I had visited Ephesus and at different times traveled in Italy, Spain and Greece. And I had long known, thanks to the song, that Constantinople was now Istanbul.
Thanks to Anzac day I also knew about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who had somehow been transformed over the years from a demon, who fought off the Anzacs; to a saviour, who removed the Ottomans; established democracy and the Republic; and undertook the secularisation of Turkey.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - a bit larger than life (and Wendy - real size)
When I finally got to Istanbul I was surprised to find a cosmopolitan city about as frightening as Sydney or New York. Going to the infamous Grand Bazaar for the first time I was careful not to take my wallet and to leave my watch in the hotel. Of course Wendy loved the place so we went there several more times accepting apple tea from the stallholders and a bargaining for this and that. Soon we treated it like a trip to Paddy’s Market in Sydney or the Victoria Markets in Melbourne.
In hindsight we may have got better value for money elsewhere, but with a bit of bargaining we didn’t do too badly and it is certainly not a ‘den of thieves’. As in most markets worldwide, when you have made a bargain and agreed a price you can quite happily let a stall holder disappear with a large note and expect him to return with the correct change.
Turkey has a secular constitution and although most of the population is Muslim religious expression in government is discouraged. We were there during Ramadan but were still able to get food during the day and eat it in public cafes and restaurants and there were numerous Turks doing the same. In Istanbul many women wear headscarves and some wear veils, but quite a few young Turkish women do not cover their heads. It is good to be in Istanbul during Ramadan. After sunset every night an enormous party starts with food stalls music and real dervishes; the ones who whirl for an hour or more.
The situation is quite different in the country. When we drove to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli there was no food on offer, nor restaurant or café open, except for a motorway Burger King where even the staff looked darkly at us, their only customers.
There are some remarkable buildings in Istanbul. At the point of the old city is the Topkapi Palace; the old fortified palace of the Ottomans, for 400 years. It is amazingly well preserved and very beautiful with some outstanding buildings including the treasury which still contains some of the imperial jewels and personal effects of the Prophet.
On the European side of the Bosporus is the new Dolmabahçe Palace completed in 1856 that has echoes of Versailles in its grandness, rich appointments and design. At the time it was built it was one of the most expensive buildings in the world (costing 35 tonnes of gold coin). It features massive amounts of architectural crystal as well as solid gold fittings.
There are several expressions of fraternal goodwill from the other sovereigns of pre World War One Europe. Queen Victoria was particularly effusive.
Among its furnishings today is the last resting place of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; the bed he died in.
Both of these palaces have a family living area or harem and a public area for receptions and government. As in North Africa, India and China the harem was populated entirely by woman and eunuchs and was managed by the mother of the Sultan. A number of wives and concubines provided the Sultan with an heir; and presumably companionship; entertainment; and numerous other uxorious delights.
Excess sons were shipped out at puberty and occasionally, even frequently, murdered either by a conniving woman hoping to be the new queen mother; by younger brothers to advance their position; or by the heir apparent out of fear of a usurper. Survival of the fittest. At Topkapi there are some 400 rooms in the harem, but the newer palace has only half that number; possibly a sign of declining Ottoman vigour? In 1924 this 624 year old tradition was overthrown with the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
Byzantine Empire
Prior to the Ottomans Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Byzantine empire that became all that remained of the Roman empire once Rome itself had fallen to the northern 'barbarians'. At its peak in 550 CE the Byzantine empire extended from Italy through, Albania, Greece, Macedonia and Bulgaria to Constantinople and down the eastern Mediterranean right across the top of North Africa through Egypt to Tunisia and across to southern Spain. Istanbul still has many Roman ruins and some Roman constructions, like the central water cistern, are virtually intact.
The Chief amongst these is Hagia Sophia, the oldest Christian cathedral in the world, built at the height of the empire between 532 and 537. It stands on the site of several preceding churches the first having been ordered by Constantine the great, the founder of Roman Christianity.
In 1453 it became a mosque but ten years after the establishment of the Republic, in 1934, it was secularised and became a museum. The Christian mosaics previously covered out of Islamic piety have been exposed so that we can see the Byzantine Emperor and his queen claiming temporal authority by their juxtaposition with the Virgin and Christ child. Notice that the language is Greek, Latin having lost favour in the Eastern Empire.
Again, below, with Jesus. Earlier figurative mosaics were destroyed during the iconoclastic controversy at the turn of the eighth century when fundamentalist Christians opposed images in places of worship and destroyed them. I have discussed this in more detail elsewhere, see footnote [4] in Egypt, Syria and Jordan . The present mosaics are from the post-iconoclastic period.
The building itself is a masterpiece of intuitive engineering and construction and it was, for over a thousand years, the largest cathedral in the world. It has stood through earthquake and tempest for nearly seventeen hundred years so far. While smaller than the Pantheon the central dome averages 31 metres in diameter, only a fraction smaller than St Paul’s in London.
It is the template for the vast Blue (Sultan Ahmed) Mosque that stands nearby and for thousands of other mosques worldwide. Thus one religion builds on another.
Istanbul boasts a ferry service similar to that in Sydney. The ferries are somewhat older rather like those that plied Sydney Harbour in the sixties’. But the routes are longer; the ferries are more numerous and they are a lot less expensive. The café on board serves Nescafé and black tea that you can stand a spoon in. They are a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours on a sunny autumn day; particularly when you have got on to the wrong ferry and find yourself in Asia when you should be in Europe. I am sure they were a lot more fun than the Turkish bath that we missed as a result of getting lost.
As mentioned above we hired a car to go to Gallipoli. It was a Fiat and quite roadworthy; once we pumped up its flat tire. Driving in Turkey can only be described as interesting. There don’t seem to be any road rules at all and much of it is a game of bluff. Drivers jump queues by going around; over the footpath or through parks; or on the other side of the road if it is not in use.
Once we had negotiated the Istanbul traffic we were on the open road much of which was dual carriageway; after a fashion. Quite often the carriageway was temporary as there were extensive roadworks. An amusing feature here is that often the new carriageway is half a metre to metre higher than the one adjacent, with no barrier along the drop, so that drifting over to the side can be fatal. As we drove along we saw an accident where this very thing had happened; spectacular crash but no burn. If you are doing less than 120 kilometres an hour you’ll be pushed over by the by the cars and trucks overtaking you. Needless to say this rarely happened to us.
When we got back I was so accustomed to Turkish driving that I successfully grabbed the only parking spot in the street in less than 15 seconds of a car leaving and ahead of several other aspirants. The man from the carpet shop told Wendy ‘he drives just like a local’. I took it as a compliment. Of course it wasn’t my car.
Gallipoli
Gallipoli itself is a heartrending place. We were almost alone to wonder the graveyards and look at the memorials and the old battlefields. There were worse places to land the Anzacs than Anzac cove but they would be hard to find. Just five kilometres to the south and they could have walked across the peninsula; unimpeded by cliffs. Ten to the north and they could have at least landed unimpeded. The goal was to silence the Turkish guns that dominated the Dardanelles straight. Had the Turks been taken by surprise it might have been a walkover.
History would have been changed and I would not be here to write this account; nor you here to read it. But the sands and cliffs of Canakkale would not be soaked in as much Australian; New Zealand; French; British and Turkish blood.
Ataturk sacrificed his entire 57th regiment to halting the initial Allied advance. He famously said: ‘I don’t expect you to attack (the enemy) I expect you to die’.
There is also a large memorial on the peninsula to the 34 British ships sunk or damaged with huge loss of life. The lower plaque reads: 'In honoured memory of the units and ships that fought on Gallipoli or in the Dardanelles and of those 20,504 British sailors and soldiers and 248 Australian soldiers who fell in this neighbourhood and have no known graves' .
It is appropriate that annually Australians mourn nearly 62,000 dead in World War One at Gallipoli and to ask: 'why we were here?' But it is also important to remember that, contrary to myth, other combatants' losses were far higher. British military deaths were 42% higher as a percentage of population and far higher in numbers; nearly 900,000 over the duration of the war.
As a percentage of population, French military deaths were double those of Britain. Both suffered significant civilian casualties. In addition to its young soldiers, France lost some 300,000 civilians dead. Serbia, with a population almost identical to Australia's, lost 275,000 soldiers and 450,000 civilians. On the other side, Germany lost over two million young men as combatants while Austria-Hungary lost over a million.
The Turkish, Ottoman Empire, military losses were 771,844 killed. In addition, over 2.1 million civilians died. To bring that into perspective, their population then was less than ours is today; about four and a half times that of Australia in 1915.
How would we cope today with 800,000 of our young men dead; in addition to loosing the entire population of Brisbane?
More Pictures of Turkey