canakkale
post by scott
At the half way point of our Turkey trip (3 weeks in) we had only managed to see three different places, so it was time to kick it up a gear and get our tourist on. There were a number of places down the Aegean coastline that we wanted to see and lots of them seemed to be tick a box type places – that is: roll into town, see the sight and then bugger off straight away to the next place. Although there were ancient ruins, cotton castles, fortresses, minelayers and Mediterranean coastlines awaiting us, I was still a bit sad to be leaving our lazy village life in Gokceada and our loyal dog Dusty.
So we jumped back on the bus, then onto the ferry, then onto another bus, then onto another ferry and before you know it we were at our first ‘stop’ – Canakkale. Although we were actually waiting for another bus it was a good chance to check out the city which guards the Dardanelle narrows across from the Gallipoli peninsula. This is the major city in the area and is where the Turks were based during the battle of Canakkale (what they call what we call Gallipoli) and which is the last line of defence before Istanbul. In a big park on the waterfront a famous military museum has the following on display: A functional periscope (although the lens has bird shit on it so a bit blurry), mines, an old submarine hull dissected into cross section, torpedos, and about a million cannons. In fact the sound of safe cannons was deafening. One of the highlights was a replica of the old minelaying ship ‘Nusrat’ which planted rows of spiky mines and thwarted the allied naval attack. Even the replica is now officially classified as the “Hero ship” Nusrat. Inside the main gallery there was even more old treasure from the great war like machine guns, bayonets, badges, bully beef tins, a hat with Ataturks writing on it and a plethora of bullets.
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The real showstopper though is a display of two bullets which actually hit side on in mid-flight! Apparently from the distance apart the trenches were, the odds of this happening are 1 in 160 million!! (Not sure how this was calculated but it’s pretty impressive). Unfortunately taking photos was not allowed inside the gallery, so I had to quickly take this photo while pretending not to understand the security guard.
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There was also a hilarious life size recreation of the Allied evacuation. Apparently in order to withdraw all the troops without the Turks knowing they had rigged up a whole army of fake diggers, sand bag horses, self-firing guns and even artillery made from stove pipes. We had previously been told that this cunning deception was the most successful part of the campaign, the Turks had fallen for it hook, line and sinker and that no allied troops were killed during the withdrawal. In the museum however there were a few unconvincing troops made from hay and sticks with a big sign above saying in English “WE KNEW”. ha ha ha!
Being a short distance from the ruins of ancient Troy, there was one more famous sight to see in Canakkale – the Trojan horse. It looks a lot like the one from the movie ‘Troy’. Primarily because it is the horse from the movie ‘Troy’. Having seen the movie we decided that it probably wasn’t worth going to see the actual Troy so at 9.45pm that night we were on the bus to our next destination – Ephesus.