2011

Turkey  Tunisia  Algeria  Iran  Transnistria

Day 1 - Istanbul to Çanakkale, Turkey

Monday

13 June 2011

This trip didn’t go to plan even before it started!

I began planning this trip in late November 2010.  The original plan was to travel with my son,Tim, to the Caucasus - Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia - and then on to Iran.  However, Di spent some time fretting after she had checked the official travel warnings and concluded that the Caucasus region was too dangerous for me.  Although it might not be readily apparent given the weird places I like to visit, I don’t actually like to make Di anxious, and so in early December I looked for and found a safer but still interesting set of destinations.  Di agreed that Libya, Tunisia and Algeria would be much safer than the Caucasus.

That was just a few weeks before the Arab Spring began.  Although Tunisia and Algeria have since become (relatively) calm after the upheavals of February and March, Libya is sadly still a no-go area for visitors.  I waited until late April to see whether the situation there would calm down, but continuing foreign military intervention in Libya seemed to guarantee that the conflict would continue for some time.  I admitted defeat at the end of April, substituting a week in Turkey for the week in Libya that I had originally planned.

And so, seven months and three plans after this trip was first conceived, I arrived this morning in Istanbul after the overnight Turkish Airlines flight from Hong Kong.  About 45 minutes later, Tim arrived from his even longer flight, coming in from Melbourne via Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines.  After all the planning, and re-planning, it was great to begin the adventure at last, even if we were meeting at a less-than-exotic location - the Avis car rental desk at Istanbul Airport.

Our main sightseeing destination for the day was Gallipoli - a place of pilgrimage for many Australians and New Zealanders.  Place names such as Anzac Cove, Lone Pine, the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula are household words in Australia, where the Gallipoli legend forms a basis for national identity, history classes in school and even one of Australia’s greatest films.

The 300 kilometre long drive from Istanbul was almost effortless, with good roads almost all the way.  I had rented a Ford Focus, which was smooth, comfortable and spacious, even given Tim’s formidable height.  It was good to be driving a manual vehicle, as it provided great exercise for my still-tender hip.  We made just one stop for an early lunch at a roadside restaurant, where we shared some lentil soup with bread, followed by baklava - a treat that makes the trip to Turkey worthwhile in itself.

Photos of Gallipoli are so widespread that I did not anticipate any real surprises when I arrived at Anzac Cove.  The landscape did look just like the photos I had seen, with the semi-arid vegetation and the high, steep, heavily eroded escarpment that had proven unscalable by the ANZAC soldiers in 1915.  However, I was surprised by how small - even diminutive - Anzac Cove was in reality.  Measuring just 600 metres in length and 20 metres in width, it would have been an inconsequential and forgotten landmark if it had not been for the significant history that occurred there.

We were fortunate in being there while the tour groups were elsewhere, presumably having lunch, and we had the entire area of Anzac Cove and the nearby cemeteries to ourselves - total silence apart from the gentle breaking of the ripple-sized waves.  Like true pilgrims of old, Tim and I walked the length of Anzac Cover and back in near silence.  In such a situation of quiet reflection, standing near the graves of the fallen beside the sea, the hopelessness of the task given to the ANZACs, and indeed the futility of war itself, became apparent and very real.

At the northern end of Anzac Cove, Tim and I took the time to reflect on Ataturk’s very gracious words (see photo to the right).  The founder of modern Turkey as a secular state, Ataturk had been a junior officer at Gallipoli during the campaign, and he know the horrors of the battle and the heroism that was displayed.  In that context, I thought his words were a remarkable statement of reconciliation - almost a prelude to Nelson Mandela’s efforts to build peace and harmony in post-apartheid South Africa.

We did visit several other spots on the Gallipoli battlefield, notably Lone Pine Cemetery, the Sergeant Mehmet monument, and The Nek, the latter point offering stunning views down towards Anzac Cove and North Beach in what must have been the Turkish defenders’ perspective in 1915.

We left Gallipoli at a little before 3 pm to drive to Eceabat, the point of origin for the short ferry trip across the Dardanelles to Çanakkale, our destination for the day.  We were very lucky in just catching the 3 pm car ferry, and in a short journey of 10 kilometres taking about 25 minutes, we crossed from Europe to Asia.

With a population of about 90,000 people, Çanakkale is a very pretty harbourside town.  Unfortunately, many of its streets were closed for renovation work, especially in the historic area where our accommodation, the Grand Anzac Hotel, was located.  Nonetheless, we found a nearby parking lots and made our way on foot to the hotel, where we received a very warm and hospitable welcome from the manager.

After a short rest, we went out for a walk to explore the town, heading first to the south to see the outdoor section of the Naval Museum and the exterior of the Çimenlik Castle, a 1452 structure built under the orders of Mehmet the Conqueror.  Both buildings were closed (because today is Monday), so we then headed north along the harbor’s edge, past the hundreds of small boats to see the Trojan Horse, used in the 2004 movie ‘Troy’ that starred Brad Pitt.  Finding the Trojan Horse in Çanakkale was not quite as unlikely as it might seem, as the site of the ancient city of Troy is just 30 kilometres away.

Our walk was interrupted by a massive thunderstorm, which lasted just 30 minutes, but resulted in a torrential downpour that caused the streets to flood and become wide rivers through the town for an hour or two.  As we were trapped by the floodwaters, Tim and I found a little cafe where we had dinner while the waters receded, a good meal of lamb shish kebabs and salad, followed by a wonderful baklava.

It has been a long day - each of woke at about 3:30 am this morning - but it has been a great start to our trip and an excellent introduction to Turkey.