On June 23, 2006 I had been serving as a lecturer on board the cruise ship, Crystal Serenity, when the ship docked for the day in Thessalonica (the old Ottoman Turkish city of “Selanik”). With close friends from the ship, I drove to Virgina, to see the tumulus of Phillip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great. Then we returned to Thessalonica and found the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal, at 17 Apostolou Pavlou.
Late in the 19th century my grandfather, Ismail Hakki (1881-1916) and his close childhood friend Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938) attended the neighborhood school together, and they played soccer/football on the streets. Of course, Mustafa Kemal would go on to rescue Turkey, then set on a seemingly inexorable course to disintegration. From the smoldering ruins of the Ottoman Empire, he would create the Republic of Turkey, as a secular Republic with Western values, promoting science and reason over superstition and dogma. A grateful parliament of the republic he created would later bestow on him the honorific title, Atatürk, “Father of the Turks.”
For eight months, through the better part of 1915, the two close friends, Lt. Colonel Mustafa Kemal and Major Ismail Hakki, fought alongside each other in the Gallipoli Campaign of WWI. A photograph was taken of my grandfather’s company during a break in the action. Immediately after the cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of the ANZACS, he traveled briefly to Edirne (Roman Adrianople) on assignment, and while there, on January 1, 1916, had a photograph taken of himself. Inscribed on the back, the message reads in old Turkish (right-to-left), “Sevgili Teyze” (“Dear aunt”), I’ve survived eight months of action in Gallipoli. I will soon leave for the Eastern Front to face the Arabs and their recalcitrant English leader.”
Before leaving for the Eastern Front, however, he visited the small town of Biga, lying to the east of Çanakkale and Troy, there to see his young family, ensconced in the town since shortly before the war began. There were his wife and three young children, two years apart in age — the oldest, a daughter; the middle, a son; and the youngest, another son, my father, “Mustafa Kemal”— named after Ismail Hakki’s childhood friend, and in accord with his wishes. (Last names were not introduced into Turkey until 1934. It can make genealogical research a hopelessly difficult task.)
After only a day or two with his family, however, Ismail Hakki had to leave again, this time to fight on the Eastern Front. There he would die, fighting against the Arabs and their “recalcitrant” English leader, T. E. Lawrence, who would become known as Lawrence of Arabia. My grandfather’s body would presumably be interred somewhere in southeastern Turkey.
In October 2008, I received an email message from Bob Kerr, an artist living in Wellington, New Zealand. Mr. Kerr explained that he was working on a diorama comprised of ten horizontally conjoined panels for ANZAC Day, April 25, 2010, and planned to include a quote from Ismail Hakki that appeared in the 2005 documentary film, Frontline Experience: Gallipoli, written, produced and directed by the Turkish filmmaker Tolga Örnek. Mr. Kerr was asking me for information about my grandfather. I responded immediately, confessing that I had precious little information about him, and could only cite the tribute that I had written for my father. Then in the closing days of 2010, I received a puzzling package in the mail. To my astonishment and deep gratitude, the long and narrow package contained a scaled down version (5×26 inches) of Bob Kerr’s panorama. Emblazoned in the sky above the hills were my grandfather’s poignant words:
I do not know these British soldiers and they do not know me, what can I say to
those who made us come here and kill each other without reason! — Ismail Hakki
In the film, Ismail Hakki continues, “I have sworn that I will not fire a single bullet without reason.”
The docudrama narrated by two celebrated actors, Sam Neill of New Zealand and Jeremy Irons of the United Kingdom, is a sobering and exquisitely balanced account of the battle fought 90-years earlier, and brought the filmmaker a distinguished award, the Medal of the Order of Australia.