From the far corners of the empire...

Really interesting about the Turkish memorials at Gallipoli are how they depict the participation of soldiers from far outside todays Turkey, mirroring the much larger Ottoman empire, which fought (and partly fell through) the First World War. The stones commemorate boys and men from Thessaloniki (Greece), Aleppo (Syria), Tabriz (Iran), Baku (Azerbaijan) and farther east outside the borders of the realm, alongside those from Izmir, Bitlis, Antep and Nevsehir (all in today's Turkey). I really wonder how they all, some from far outside the Ottoman lands, came to fight and die in the trenches of the Gallipoli peninsula and for what cause?












I will return to the Allied memorials another day.