Canakkale

Arıburnu, 1915. He has been fighting for three years. He spends every night in the trench. He knows that the moment he sticks his head out of the trench, he will die with a bullet to his head from just a few meters away. He is brave but also afraid. He freezes as he eats the cold of the Dardanelles at night. He is hungry, miserable, and despite his fear of dying and the feeling of death at every moment, he is unaware that he will fight for another seven years. Ali Ratip's story began with the Balkan War. The days in the trenches pass among torn bodies, human limbs, the smell of gunpowder and corpses. Food is almost non-existent. His son Orhan, born in 1916, will tell years later that he remembers the year he first saw his father as 1921.

Ali Ratip survives Ariburnu. He will cross the Tigris River on his horse while escaping from the British soldiers and will become a veteran of the war in his later years. He notes everything he experiences and writes his memories on the fronts. When the duty at Ariburnu is over, it was not easy to go all the way to Mesopotamia on horseback. Misery, hunger and disease are rampant in Anatolia. The Ottoman army fought in two great wars on two fronts of the country within a few months. First Sarıkamış, then Çanakkale. While running from one front to the other with his machine gun, Ali Ratip is unaware of Ahmet who was martyred in Sarıkamış. His two-year-old son İhsan, who was waiting for Ahmet who was martyred in Sarıkamış, will also be fatherless at an early age and will study in Kuleli out of anger. After becoming an officer, he went to Sarıkamış and tried to find the place where his father died, but he could not find any trace.

Source: Tunca Family archive.

The war ends. Ali Ratip is in Adana. Coincidentally, he learned in Adana that the war ended in September 1922. He is penniless. He has no money to return home. He sells his horse, which saved him from being captured by the British, crying bitterly, uses the money he gets for travel expenses and returns home. On the way back, he thinks he will be at peace, but his state of mind is not like that. The country is saved, but how will he live from now on? How will the house be supported? And after he came out with heart disease from the wars that lasted for years. Learning that it will be good for his health, he settles in Kırklareli. He now has to live in a place where the air is not humid. However, his heart stops in 1952. His funeral is taken to the martyr's cemetery in Kırklareli. His heart, which has not been defeated by the war, suddenly surrenders to God one day.

With the Surname Law, he took the name of the Tunca River, which originates in Bulgaria, as his surname. All that remained from the war and even from his entire life was a red-striped Independence Medal and a few daggers. His memoirs written at the front were stolen. However, as in İlhan Selçuk's Captain Selahattin's Novel, real events were recounted day by day among yellow pages full of gunpowder and blood.

Photo: Tunca Family archive.

There were 27 more people among those who left Istanbul and went to the front in Çanakkale in 1915. They were all students of Kabataş Mekteb-i Sultanisi. Asım's son Cevad, Mustafa's son Mehmed Seyfettin, Ahmet Tevhid's son Mehmed Şükrü, Mustafa's son Feridun, İsmail Fuad's son Mehmet Muhsin, Rıza's son İskender, Mahmud's son Ali Ferid, Miyako's son İsak, Rasim's son Şerafettin, Mustafa's son Ahmed Enver, Ahmed Edip's son Hüseyin Medeni, Avram's son Hayim, Osman Nuri's son Mehmed, Avram Şeftu's son İsak, Abdurrahman's son Ali, Kazım's son Ahmed, Abdullatif's son Yusuf, Mehmed Emin's son Ahmed, Osman's son İbrahim, Mahmud's son Ali Burhanettin, Ahmed's son Mehmet Selim, Mehmed's son Salim, Hasan's son Mehmet Şevket, Mehmed's son Ali, Mustafa's son Şaban, Süleyman's son Abdulaziz, Mehmed's son Kamil. All of them, shot from their spotless foreheads, have become suns lying down for a crescent on the front. None of them have been able to return from the front. Kabataş Mekteb-i Sultanisi also could not graduate in 1915. Just like the previous 3 years.

Photo: Arda Tunca

These stories are neither official history nor stories learned by chance. The lives of Ali Ratip and Ahmet are true stories heard from living witnesses within the family. Ali Ratip is my father's grandfather, Ahmet is my mother's grandfather. The martyrs of Kabataş Boys' High School, of which I am a graduate, are our elder brothers from Kabataş.

I bow with respect and gratitude to the painful but proud memories left to us by all of them.

May their souls rest in peace.