Dur Yolcu Memorial

View of the Dur Yolcu Memorial, in Turkey. The Dur Yolcu Memoriali is located above the great ancient Kilitbahir fort, and on a hilltop to the right of it, and it’s easily visible from the ferry from Çanakkale to Eceabat.

It represents a huge figure of a 1915 Turkish soldier carved in white upon the hillside. In one hand he holds a rifle while his other arm is outstretched towards a Turkish inscription:

“Dur yolcu!
Bilmeden gelip bastýöýn,
Bu toprak, bir devrin battýöý yerdir”

These words are the beginning of a poem written by a Turkish poet, Necmettin Halil Onan. These words have been loosely translated into English in two well-known and excellent English language guidebooks to the battlefields of Gallipoli in this way:

“Traveller halt!
The soil you tread
Once witnessed the end of an era”

Here is the whole poem in the only translation available on the internet as yet:

“Stop wayfarer! Unbeknownst to you this ground
You come and tread on, is where an epoch lies;
Bend down and lend your ear, for this silent mound
Is the place where the heart of a nation sighs.

To the left of this deserted shadeless lane
The Anatolian slope now observe you well;
For liberty and honour, it is, in pain,
Where wounded Mehmet laid down his life and fell.

This very mound, when violently shook the land,
When the last bit of earth passed from hand to hand,
And when Mehmet drowned the enemy in flood,
Is the spot where he added his own pure blood.

Think, the consecrated blood and flesh and bone
That make up this mound, is where a whole nation,
After a harsh and pitiless war, alone
Tasted the joy of freedom with elation”

Necmettin commands us to stop and consider the ‘mound’ of earth that is the Gallipoli Peninsula. Here beats the heart of a whole ‘epoch’ or period of Turkish national life. It was here in 1915 that the ordinary Turkish soldier – Mehmet – laid down his life for the freedom of Turkey, paid indeed for that freedom with his own blood.
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