Qualla: Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial

Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Berkea9707, CC BY-SA 4.0. The story of Gallipoli, in most of the English-speaking world, belongs to the ANZACs - the Australian and New Zealand troops whose suffering on the cliffs above Anzac Cove became the founding modern myth of two nations. There is another half of that story. The Ottoman soldiers who fought from the trenches above those cliffs lost an estimated 86,000 dead and tens of thousands more wounded over eight months of fighting. They were defending their homeland. Most were peasant conscripts from villages across Anatolia. The Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial, on Hisarlik Hill at the southern tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, stands for the roughly 253,000 Turkish soldiers who served on the Ottoman side. It is impossible to look at the cliffs without thinking about both halves at once.

Image: Berkea9707 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial: Hisarlik Hill

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The memorial sits on a low headland at the southern end of the Gallipoli peninsula, overlooking Morto Bay where it meets the Dardanelles - the narrow strait that British and French battleships tried, and failed, to force in March 1915. Four square stone columns, each 7.5 metres w...

Image: Adam Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial: A Memorial That Took Sixteen Years

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kadı, CC BY-SA 4.0. An architectural competition for a Turkish Gallipoli memorial was opened in 1944 - nearly thirty years after the battle, and during another war that Turkey had managed to stay out of. The winning design came from architects Dogan Erginbas and Ismail Utkular and the engineer Ertug...

Image: Kadı | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial: The 57th Regiment

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Romtobbi, Public domain. On 25 April 1915, ANZAC troops landed below the heights of Chunuk Bair on the Aegean side of the peninsula and started up the slopes. They were met by the 57th Regiment of the Ottoman 19th Division, commanded by a Lieutenant Colonel named Mustafa Kemal - later known as Ataturk. H...

Image: User:Romtobbi | Public domain

Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial: Johnnies and Mehmets

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Emrahuygun, CC BY-SA 4.0. After the war, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk wrote what became one of the most quoted reconciliation passages of the twentieth century, addressed to the mothers of the ANZAC dead: Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives - you are now lying in the soil of a friendly countr...

Image: Emrahuygun | CC BY-SA 4.0

Canakkale Martyrs' Memorial: What Lies Beneath the Soil

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alfinkedisi, CC BY-SA 4.0. The poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy, who wrote the Turkish national anthem, has verses inscribed at the memorial site that translate roughly as: Do not ignore the ground on which you have walked. It is not ordinary soil. Reflect on the thousands of people who lie beneath without a shroud....

Image: Alfinkedisi | CC BY-SA 4.0