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....
The "Eastern Front" was Mesopotamia? Hejaz?
some famili names are knwn