Further away, across the straits and also easily visible from the ferry, is the other great ancient fort guarding the Narrows – Kilitbahir (Lock of the Sea). Above the fort, and on a hilltop to the right, is 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 bastığın Bu toprak, bir devrin battığı yerdir.

These words of the Turkish poet, Necmettin Halil Onan, 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.

What does this mean? Does it suggest that the defeat by the Turks of the Allied armies and navies of 1915 ushered in a new ‘era’? That the ‘era’ represented by the old colonial empires of Britain and France was somehow brought to an end here at the hands of ordinary Turkish soldiers? Such an interpretation seems plausible until the whole of Necmettin’s poem is looked at and a rather different translation of his words considered. 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.