TURKISH WAR MEMORIAL

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26857, 9 October 1952, Page 11

TURKISH WAR MEMORIAL

Deaths In Dardanelles Campaign COMMEMORATION SCHEME (From a Reuter Correspondent.) ISTANBUL. Turkey is making plans to build an impressive national memorial to the 55,000 soldiers of the Ottoman Army who died in the Dardanelles campaign of World War I. The scheme calls for a great arch of red Anatolian granite, 120 feet high, standing on a hill crest which overlooks the Aegean Sea- and the waters of the Hellespont, Subscription lists were opened recently in Istanbul and Ankara with a target of £2,000,000. It is estimated that about two years will be needed to collect funds and complete building. The memorial may be completed for dedication during the 1954 pilgrimage to the Dardanelles battlefields. The annual pilgrimage now includes representatives of Britain, the Commonwealth and France. Representatives of the former enemy countries were invited to take part in it this year for the first time and the experiment proved so successful that it has been decided to perpetuate it. United States Army officers will also be invited each year, and former officers of the German Army of 1914-18 may also be present. Existing Monuments Existing monuments to the Turkish dead of the Dardanelles campaign are local shrines at historic points, out there is none which can be considered a national tribute to all the dead. One of the existing monuments was begun in the heat of battle by Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey— Colonel Mustapha Kemal as he then was. His later name, meaning “Father of the Turks,” was an honour awarded him by the nation. During the decisive Anafarta battle, Ataturk was so impressed by the gallantry with which one of his men, Sergeant-Major Mehmet, had met death in action that with his own hands he gathered empty shell-cases from the littered field and built a cairn on the spot. Later, a stone obelisk was built to replace this unique tribute.

Today, many of the public memorials in the cities and towns of Turkey are sculptured figures or busts of Ataturk. Some pf them were recently attacked and disfigured by members of a fanatical Moslem sect which holds that Islam forbids any “graven image.” This belief has been widely held throughout the Moslem world for centuries, and for many Turks the erection of sculptured representations of human beings has been as striking a proof of Westernisation and modernisation as any other of the Ataturk‘reforms. This in part explains why it is only now, nearly 40 years after the fighting, that Turkey is preparing a Dardanelles war memorial. It must be remembered, too, that for Turkey the war did not end in 1918. With scarcely a pause, the world struggle turned into a fight to save the Turkish homeland in Thrace and Anatolia from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire—a conflict which left Turkey battle-scarred, exhausted and impoverished, but a sovereign independent nation with frontiers freely negotiated and, save for the Alexandretta Sanjak, freely approved by her Government. The nation’s thoughts turned first to those who had fallen in the War of Independence rather than to the dead of the Ottoman period. Army initiative There is another interesting aspect to the movement which has now begun to collect funds for the Dardanelles memorial. The initiative came from the Public Relations Office of the First Army (the Istanbul Command). Though monuments are a comparative novelty in Turkey, an Army Public Relations Office is an even more striking innovation. The First Army P.R.O. started work only this year. One of its aims is to give tangible form and living expression to the close relationship which has always existed between the people and the Army of the Republic and to encourage legitimate national pride in the country’s military history. The Dardanelles memorial plan will serve this purpose well.

It is shown by the immediate public response .to the Army idea. The President of the Republic (Mr Celal Bayar) at once expressed deep interest, and members of the Government have promised support. It is not, however, a Government-sponsored scheme. For the Army desires this to be a national movement, apart from all political party alignments. Typical of popular response is the request by groups of Istanbul University students to be allowed to work for part of their vacation as labourers on building the memorial. Leading Turkish banks have volunteered their services in collecting subscriptions and managing the accounts. Architectural and engineering professors of the Istanbul and Technical Universities have offered help in drawing up the detailed plans and carrying out the construction. No subscription list has yet been published—the appeal was made only a few weeks ago—but the response has been good. A preliminary contest for designs attracted 51 entries. The design finally selected may undergo some changes, but probably not substantial ones. It is for a monumental arch, not unlike the Arch de Triomphe in Paris, in its main lines, to be approached from a terraced base 180 feet square in its greatest, extent, and decreasing to 75 feet square on the terrace at the foot of the arch. The exact site has hot yet been chosen, but the one tentatively selected is at Alcitepe, on a hill overlooking the tip of the peninsula, and commanding a view of both the Aegean and the Hellespont.