Turkey on ANZAC Day

Intro: I started writing this blog post not long after coming back from Turkey but kept putting off finishing it. Now, some 10 months later, I have finally got around to finishing it. The trip happened in April 2009.

I am Australian.

I am not a descendent of an Australian soldier. In fact, I don’t have any Aussie ancestors at all. I wasn’t even born in Australia and I wasn’t brought up by Australian parents. I am Czech. But for the fact that I am also Australian, I am extremely grateful. My parents literally risked their freedom to escape from the then oppressive and corrupt Czechoslovak regime to come to Australia and start from scratch; to build a better life for all three of us.

I appreciate that Australia took me in and made me one of theirs. In return, I choose to embrace the Australian culture, heritage and lifestyle. I strive to understand what it means to be Australian and experience this to its full potential. This is something I realised a couple of years ago, and at that point I decided I would someday take the pilgrimage that is the ANZAC Day visit to Gallipoli.

Sue, my Aussie friend also living in London, Vanessa, my New Zealander girlfriend and I flew out of London Heathrow to Istanbul on a Saturday morning. Four hours later, we were at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.

We managed to get an airport transfer (long story, too long even for me to write about!) and headed into the city to our old town hotel.  The drive to the city fascinated me. This was definitely the most exotic place I had been so far. The most-different place. Just watching the people go about their ways outside kept me engrossed. Watching families have barbeques on the foreshore of the Bosphorus strait.  The women wore long clothes and headscarves.  The men wore trousers, suit jackets and leather shoes.  They cooked some meat on some coal fired barbeques.  The children played on play equipment on a small foreshore, with six lanes of busy traffic zooming past on one side, and a waterway filled with many large metal boats on the other. In some ways, it was like a barbecue on the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne. But yet it looked and seemed totally different.

We disposed of our heavy backpacks in our hotel rooms and immediately went exploring. We were thirsty (thanks to some enthusiastic complimentary drinking on our BA flight over) and wanted some water. You don’t drink Turkish tap water.  Everyone drinks bottled water.  So I went to the nearest small street-side shop, grabbed two 500ml bottles of water out of the fridge and handed the shopkeeper some money. I gave him my smallest note: ten Turkish Lira*. I did it this way because I didn’t know whether the Turks understood any English, and my Turkish isn’t great. He handed me four Lira change. I thought three Lira bottle was a bit steep but didn’t say anything. Later I found everyone selling water bottles for half a Lira each. I had been ripped off big time! Turkey Lesson Number 1: Negotiate all prices BEFORE handing over cash.

We walked down to the waterside, enjoyed some corn on the cob from a seller on the street, and watched the sun set over some mosques. We walked through some small markets, and warded off dozens of restaurant workers trying to entice us to go into their restaurant.  Our restaurant of choice was just outside our hotel. We ate at a table out on the narrow pedestrian allleyway.  After a three course meal for the three of us for about sixty Lira (less than thirty pounds) including beer, we retired to the colourful cushions on the terrace for some apple tea and fruity tobacco, smoked out of the Arabic style Shisha pipe.

The next day we explored this newly discovered land some more. From the palace gardens to the shops on the main drag; from secret tea garden amongst the tulip flower beds on the cliff-top overlooking the harbour to the old mosques, from the more restaurants in the alleyways to the grand bazaar markets!

That night was the start of our tour with Travel Talk. We met the rest of the group and the tour guide in our hotel for the welcome speech, though I suspect we all found it a bit hard to concentrate after the beer we had just drunk on the cushions at the bar outside, and the duty free booze from Heathrow we got into back in the hotel room.  As it turns out, our tuning out on what the guide was saying would continue all tour, despite our soberness. Our tour guide didn’t have the best English. He was fluent, but he made mistakes, and inserted either the phrases “say it” or “you know so” at into his sentences at an interval of every few words.  I guess it was his way of getting his thoughts together, and fair enough, he wasn’t a native English speaker. Unfortunately, he also wasn’t very captivating, kept jumping from point to point, and didn’t show any interest in his audience whatsoever. He wasn’t the best guide. That, combined with various admin mistakes made by our organisers along the way, would make us all think twice before recommending Travel Talk Tours in Turkey.

Having said that, we mainly had a good time. There were hiccups on the along the way.  For example, our so-called “welcome party” dinner  resulted in me waking at 4am with some violent stomach pain and the need to frequent the toilet.  The next day I wasn’t the same, having to pop my first ever Imodium and feeling rather cramped as I tried enjoying the sights of the city. Turkey Lesson number 2: Your body WILL reject Turkish cuisine. 

The tour covered various historic and prehistoric points in Istanbul, before we headed out South.

We went to Gallipoli a few days ahead of Anzac day for the opportunity to have a look at the sites of the fighting before all of the Anzac day crowds arrive.  It was quite interesting walking on the small beach that 74 years later would be full of allied troops invading the Turkish coast. It was all much smaller than I had expected, and made you realise that our soldiers there were never too far from the enemy and the rain of their high velocity machine gun bullets from the cliffs above.

The next few days was spent travelling all over the Western part of Turkey. We saw some amazing natural and historic sites. My favourite was Pamukkale, an amazing white hot spring terrace.

Visiting various ancient Roman cities was also great, but the whole trip felt like a bit of a rush. We spent hours and hours on buses in between locations which were far and wide apart. We started each day early in the morning and finished late at night. We stayed in some nice hotels but had no time to relax.

On the day before ANZAC Day, we got up extra early and raced towards Gallipoli. We covered hundreds of miles and stopped off along the way for a rush visit to the site of ancient Troy.  We hurried  through it, because we wanted to be at Gallipoli reasonably early. There is only a limited amount of space to camp on the grass, and we desperately wanted to be amongst those camped there. The alternative would be to spend all night on the seats of a grandstand.

We made it to Gallipoli in the early afternoon, and it was a beautiful sunny day on the beach. We went through the stringent security checks to get on the site. They searched for dangerous items and alcohol – no grog allowed! Then we managed to get some of the last spots on the grass.

We put out our sleeping bags and took our spots.   It was a friendly atmosphere and we had a nice time with other friends that were there for the service, as the afternoon turned into the evening, and the evening into the night.

Turkey Lesson Number 3: It gets bloody cold at night!

As it got into the early hours of the morning, the temperature dropped severely. I was wearing a normal set of clothes, a jumper, ski jacket, blanket and a sleeping bag, but was still freezing. Luckily we were on the grass so we managed to get pretty low and out of the breeze. I even got some sleep. But the cold really got me thinking. We were spending an evening there in late April. That’s when the soldiers landed, back during World War 1. But the ANZACs fought the Turks for months on end. They endured a hot summer but then they were there until November. November in Europe is very cold, the start of some serious winter weather. It snowed in Gallipoli. Any cold that I was feeling that one night, would have been way surpassed by what the soldiers had to go through!

As dawn approached, we saw the light come up over the hills behind the beach, slowly. The services started. We learned all about the WW1, and the tough campaigns including this one. It was amazing, being in the very spot that it all happened. It really made me appreciate how lucky we are to be living in a time of relative peace.

The dawn service was emotional and sobering.

As the sun came up, the temperature began to rise again. By mid morning it was hot. We made our way up the hill for the next service.  ANZAC day was over my the early afternoon, and we headed off back to Istanbul and eventually back to London.

Our tour wasn’t the best organised – I talked to many others who seemed to have a much better tour. But the experience overall was very worthwhile. The Gallipoli service got some bad press in recent years, and certain people claim you shouldn’t go. I couldn’t disagree more. Every Australian should go.   Hearing the stories about the Turks and ANZACs, who were deadly enemies, cooperating to make their time there just a little bit more bearable, was amazing. And the spirit of cooperation continues to this day. When you say you are from Australia, the locals seem genuinely happy to see you there, even if it is just an appreciation for being there to spend some money and adding to their economy. It’s the least we could do for them.

* One Turkish Lira was worth about 43 English pence or 90 Australian cents.