Gallipoli - Ottoman Era

Ottoman Era

After the devastating 1354 earthquake, the Greek city of Gallipoli was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman position in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.

The peninsula, a part of the Byzantine Empire, was gradually conquered by the Ottoman Empire from 13th century to the 15th century. The Greeks living there were allowed to continue their everyday life. In the 19th century, Gallipoli (Turkish: Gelibolu) was a district (kaymakamlik) in the Vilayet of Adrianople, with about thirty thousand inhabitants: comprising Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.

Gallipoli became a major encampment for British and French forces in 1854 during the Crimean War, and the harbour was also a stopping-off point on the way to Constantinople.

Gallipoli did not experience any more wars until World War I, when British and colonial forces attacked the peninsula in 1915, seeking to secure a route to relieve their ally Imperial Russia in the east. The Ottomans set up defensive fortifications along the peninsula and the attackers were eventually repulsed.

In 1920 after the defeat of the Russian White army of General Pyotr Wrangel, a significant number of emigre soldiers and their families evacuated to Gallipoli from the Crimean Peninsula. From there, many went to European countries, such as Yugoslavia, where they found refuge. A stone monument was erected and a special "Gallipoli cross" was created to commemorate the soldiers, who stayed in Gallipoli. The stone monument was destroyed during an earthquake, but in January 2008 reconstruction of the monument had begun with the consent of the Turkish government.