Canakkale, the northwestern Turkish city on the Dardanelles straits, is presumed to hold the historic city of Troy that witnessed the legendary Trojan War. The story of Troy has been immortalised in the Iliad, the ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer of the 8th century BCE. Archaeological excavations from the 19th century have brought out invaluable remnants of the ancient city, which are meticulously kept and presented in the sites and museums of Canakkale. They have attracted visitors from worldwide and ensured the city a growing revenue source. Memories of Troy are everywhere, with even the restrooms for women and men in a local restaurant named after Helen and Paris, respectively. The massive wooden Trojan Horse featured in the Brad Pitt starrer Troy (2004) is installed at the Canakkale port, drawing hordes of tourists. Iliad says Greek soldiers used the wooden horse to hide inside and launch a surprise attack on Troy after their repeated attempts failed. The Greeks were angered by the abduction of the gorgeous Helen, the wife of the Spartan king, by the Trojan prince Paris. Troy’s director, Wolfgang Anderson, gifted the horse to Turkey to assuage the Turkish people’s anger for not mentioning their country in the film.

Troy seems to have an unending tradition of betrayal and cheating. Even the businessman and amateur German archaeologist Heinrich Shliemann, who first led the excavation of Troy in the 19th century that unearthed the ancient city, was accused of having destroyed precious artefacts and even smuggled some of them!

Betrayed Indians

Standing at the Troy excavation site, our knowledgeable guide pointed to a hill about 50 miles away and said proudly. “Look, that's Gallipoli battlefields, where the Turkish soldiers defeated the Allies in the First World War in 1915”. It was not the venue of an imaginary war like Troy but of the real and historic battle of Gallipoli. The victory at Gallipoli energised Turkish morale and threw up a leader like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, one of the Turkish commanders. Ataturk later became the president and architect of modern Turkiye.

But what shocked me more about Gallipoli was the unchronicled miseries, discrimination and gross neglect of the thousands of Indian soldiers who, too, fought under the British army. More than 1700 Indians died in Gallipoli’s treacherous terrain, who remain unknown. Even more excruciating than the........

© Mathrubhumi English