Freeland, Whidbey Island, Washington
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It is 5:00 a.m. and still dark when a small group of Italians, Americans, and one lone Australian rise for the final day of our tour of western Turkey.
Today we will cross the Dardanelles from Canakkale on the last leg to Istanbul.
But for some of us – who remember some of the meaning of a name – there is unfinished business.
The dawn breaks to a grey, sullen sky as our small ferry cuts across the narrow, choppy water from Asia to Europe.
After days of bright sunshine the contrast is stark, yet somehow entirely appropriate.
One more stop.
Gallipoli.
Gallipoli was a foot-note in that first conflagration known as “The Great War”.
Gallipoli: a “footnote” with over half a million casualties on both sides.
Within minutes of reaching the farther shore the bus enters the well-kept military park and, as we follow the winding road up toward the precious high ground, a hush descends over us all.
This is different than the battlefields at Troy, or Actium; or, for those of English heritage, Agincourt or Crecy.
This is our families’ battlefield.
As we drive further into the park a statue looms ahead – familiar, at least in learned memory, to only one of us – a soldier carrying another in his arms – focused Turk carrying wounded Australian – and a plaque in Turkish.
The simple written language is undecipherable to all of us, but the profound spiritual meaning is so powerful that it almost renders the plaque unnecessary.
Here is the first witness for peace: war should never, in the end, separate us from our common humanity.
And then, out of the gently flowing mist, a tower rises, marked with that most rare of symbols in this 99% Muslim nation: a cross.
We who grew up on this most bloody of continents know what is coming next for it is but one of so many that dot the European countryside: a military cemetery – not alone in this area, but of particular significance today.
Here, atop this highest of high grounds, appearing to reach for the heavens, is Lone Pine.
Names have power. For most people “Lone Pine” might be a town a few miles down the road, so innocent is its name. For Australians it carries the same meaning as “that clump of trees” has for Southerners – the place identified as the target of General Picket’s division by Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg on July 3rd 1863.
The Gallipoli campaign began in March 1915 and lasted eight months. Its intent was to force Turkey out of the war, and to open a supply line from the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles, Sea of Marmara , and Bosporus, to Russia. To do so the Allies needed to take what is now European Turkey – including Istanbul – and control these narrow waterways.
After naval and marine skirmishes the major landings occurred on April 25, 1915, a defining moment for the nascent nations of Australia and New Zealand, and remembered in both countries thereafter as ANZAC Day (“Australian and New Zealand Army Corps”).
Small white markers, carefully laid out, cover the beautifully kept cemetery grounds. It is as if these soldiers have been called, finally, to their last parade: “Present and ready for duty, sir!”
Of the many fatalities less than a third of the soldiers were identified. Many of the markers begin: “Believed to be buried in this cemetery…..”
These are intimate markers: “Beloved husband”, “Devoted father”, “Only son”, “Son, brother, husband, father.”
And many, too, have poignant inscriptions: “He died a hero for king and country to keep Australia free”, “As he lived so he died – doing his best”, “He died for freedom,” “He died a hero”, “He died in a far country fighting for his native land”, “He gave his life for his friend”……
“The price of freedom [may well be] eternal vigilance,” but that’s only half the picture: vigilance is not enough.
In the end the cost is always accounted for in the blood of the fallen.
The group pauses only briefly at Lone Pine – disturbed, amid its trip to ancient ruins, by something so close to home.
But some linger, sensing a message of hope.
Lone Pine is more than a cemetery: it is a place of meeting.
It is a reminder of how enemies, in the way they choose to live both through their fighting and through the peace that follows, can become friends – today a bond beyond mere friendship binds Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand.
And no matter whether you believe that military action is sometimes necessary, or take a contrary view, Lone Pine creates around the one view and the other a sacred space – a reminder of war’s ultimate cost to humanity: its members.
And it is also a place of encounter with each other; a brief vision of hope that there can be a field of peace that lies somewhere beyond the present moment that can be reached without any more places like this one.
And, too, a realization that it will take each other, working together, to make that vision a present reality.
In 1916, Lt. Colonel, Mustapha Kamal, commander of the Turkish forces at Gallipoli, wrote a letter to the mothers of the Australians and New Zealanders killed there.
Almost single-handedly his letter transformed the future.
And it continues to remind us all that true community is the fruit of individuals being willing to see beyond hot conflict to a future shaped by values of compassion, relationship, and peace.
We always need people like Mustapha Kamal. This is what this man, later called “Attaturk” (“Father of Turkey”), said:
"Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they become our sons as well."
By the time we reached Ephesus we had become ‘old hands’ at recognizing ruins!
Canon John Peterson had taught us well: both Rachel and I can now identify the Cardo, the Decamanis, and the Tetrapylon in any Roman ruin!
The Cardo is the main East-West street in any Roman city, and the Decamanis the North-South street. Where they meet is – well, you guessed it! – the Tetrapylon! The center of town.
This knowledge rather surprised our guide, who has clearly been used to repeating her knowledge as the resident “expert”.
Ephesus is no different thank other Roman cities, except in size. By the time Paul preached before 25,000 people in the amphitheatre there were nearly 300,000 people living there.
Paul chose Ephesus as a site for a new Christian community for the same reason he chose all of the other locations: they were all centers of Imperial regional administration.
Ephesus was one of the larger of these centers, and its remains reflect its status as the one-time capital of the province (and, eventually of the eastern part of the Roman Empire).
Originally Ephesus was a port city. Now it is several miles from the sea as a result of the deposits made by the river Meander as it made its way to the Aegean. The Meander gave its name to that characteristic of many rivers in their final stages – meandering.
As with the other locations we visited here in Turkey the countryside and climate were familiar – hot, dry, brown!
Ephesus was also built on the side of a hill that formed the shallow basin for the now-extinct bay, so we had some climbing to do! Perhaps the most interesting part of the visit was in the special area close to the theatre. German archaeologists continue to unearth remarkable finds as they excavate what was the most wealthy part of this ancient city.
Visiting Ephesus – like many of the other sites we’ve seen – requires a exercise of the imagination, since all that remains now are ruins.
Yet these ruins are still evocative of that time nearly two thousand years ago, when Paul first walked these same flagstones, bring Good News to the inhabitants.
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| The Blue Mosque |
Turkey is a country that not only straddles continents – Europe and Asia meeting at the Bosporus – it also straddles civilizations.
Today Turkey is over 98% Muslim, yet this land played a central role in the spread of early Christianity.
By today’s boundaries, for instance, St. Paul was Turkish.
And many of the places he visited as listed in his own letters, and in the Acts of the Apostles – familiar names like Cappodocia, Laodocia, etc. – are in modern-day Turkey.
And it is in Cappodocia that we begin our tour, having spent a fascinating day in Istanbul, by flying to Ankara. Mustapha Kamal, the first president of Turkey, moved Turkey’s capital from Istanbul (in the upper left corner of Turkey) to Ankara because it was so centrally located.
And that is where he is buried. We visited his Mausoleum before departing Ankara. It is a striking monument befitting a man who single-handedly created modern Turkey.
It’s clear he was greatly impressed by the history of the United States. The Mausoleum reminded me of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C., and Mustapha Kamal’s actions resonate with American history.
Turkey fought its own War of Independence from Greece ending in victory in 1923. Kamal immediately separated Mosque and State, gave women the vote, and introduced a whole series of governmental reforms that lead to the creation of the modern state of Turkey as a democratic republic in 1926.
One of those reforms was the so-called “surname law” – until then there were no family names, only first names. The Parliament’s first act was to give Mustapha Kamal his own family name: “Attaturk”, meaning “Father of Turkey.”
It is hard to underestimate the importance of Attaturk – for Turks he is like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one. Even today his picture is everywhere, and he stands head and shoulders over any other Turk in the modern era.
From Ankara we headed south to Cappodocia.
The area reminded me of parts of Arizona and New Mexico – dry, brown, and hot – and also of the “Bad Lands” – winding canyons, with occasional scrub brush.
St. Paul focused much of his attention on what is now modern Turkey – identified in the back of most bibles as “Asia Minor”. He tended to plant congregations in the Roman provincial capitals, since they were the hubs of governance and commerce and hence places where new knowledge could easily grow and spread.
He spent a lot of time in Cappodocia, and in future years it paid off.
When Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of Rome the Christian community in Cappodocia exploded – and that community gave the Church three of its most significant saints (known as the Cappodician Fathers): Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Naziansas, and Basil the Great.
Persecution was commonplace to the Cappodocian Church. For the first three centuries of its existence it literally lived underground. In central Cappodicia – due to the huge expanses of soft, volcanic rock – whole cities (as much as eight levels deep) were carved out below ground. There were ventilation shafts, ‘barns’, sleeping, eating, cooking quarters, store-rooms, even bathing rooms – though all excess water and the various detritus of human living had to be taken outside for disposal.
Our visit to these underground cities (as many as 20 have been discovered and archaeologists believe that there are many more waiting to be found) was fascinating.
It was – after our experiences in the Holy Land – very interesting to see how caves again featured in Christian history.
Even when Constantine made Christianity THE religion of the Empire the caves continued to be used – they provided even temperatures, shelter from the weather, and a defendable position in case of attack.
With the growth of Islam Christianity was again persecuted, and Christians returned to the caves.
Islam became more tolerant in the Middle Ages, and the caves were largely abandoned for above-ground structures. Most of the Christians of Turkey left in 1923 with the exchange of populations following the war of independence with Greece and the sites were all abandoned.
In the underground city we visited there was one cave of particular interest – it was a church, complete with very primitive rude screen separating people from altar.
In another – subsequently a monastic center – there were four or five churches hollowed out in the rock – each with a central dome and four surrounding domes, and with amazing frescoes on the walls.
Our visit to Cappodocia brought the stories about St Paul in Acts, and his own letters, to life for me. Now when I hear the Pentecost story it will have new meaning because of this visit.
Our next destination, however, is Ephesus – and I’m very much looking forward to that.
Many more pictures of the caves, monasteries, and churches of Cappadocia are here.
More pictures of Istanbul and vicinity are here.
Continue reading Nigel's journal with his entries from the Holy Land.
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