Turkish authorities are clear-felling the pine trees at the Anzac site on the Gallipoli peninsula following the mid-year bushfire there, leaving remaining trench formations exposed to erosion as the summer dry ends.
The fire affected 5000 hectares. Workers are now clear-felling the pines, including many that survived the fire, from Anzac Cove on the coast up past the Lone Pine Memorial to the high point where the Australians reached in April 1915. The exposed site makes it easy for scavenging and bottles, shells and bones are easily found.
Australia is in no position to object to the logging, but is exploring ways of helping the Turks with reafforestation, according to Australian authorities. The Treaty of Lausanne 1922 refers only to actual cemeteries, not the surrounding land. The Gallipoli cemeteries are looked after by the six-nation Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
At a visit earlier this month I saw:
Trees with greenery still on them sawn up.
Stumps with sap oozing out of them.
Kilometres of stacked logs.
No replanting.
Some unconfirmed suggestions from locals that the logs were being sent to Instanbul to make paper.
By contrast, in private land, adjacent to the site which had also been burnt, the trees had been left awaiting possible regeneration _ a more conventional way of dealing with bushfires.
However, the director of the Office of Australian War Graves, Air Vice-Marshall Alan Heggen, said there was nothing to be alarmed about.
Australia was working with Britain and New Zealand to see how it could help the Turks with cleaning up and afforestation. What form that help took was yet to be decided. With the 80th anniversary next year, Australia would be looking to some special gesture of support.
Australia could not object to the logging, because that was a matter for local control; there was no agreement covering timber. It was their timber.
The Heads of Mission of Australia, Britain and New Zealand in Ankara were having discussions about the long-term management to protect the area, facilitate visitors and control encroachment by urban development and farming.
Air Vice-Marshal Heggen said, “”We are being kept aware of the clean-up and we are talking with the Turkish Government about how we might help reafforestation,” he said.
It need not be the formal pine plantation like before.
“”The Turks are inclined to say let’s go back to 1915, when it had lower-level scrub, not pine,” he said.
However he accepted that there was a danger that without stabilisation existing trench formations could be lost in erosion and that the site was more open to scavenging.
“”Scavenging is illegal under Turkish law, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t done,” he said.
A dealer in nearby Canakkale told me he would pay the equivalent of $15 for water canteens for on-sale to tourists.
The clear-felling has at least a temporary advantage. Anzac now looks very much like the pictures in Charles Bean’s official history and his later “”Gallipoli Mission” and other historic pictures. That shows, of course, that the site has been thoroughly devegetated before and grown back.
Point to feature on Saty Page please…..
Point to feature on Saty Page….. Anzac Cove by kayak.