Cannonballs monuments to be assembled on Çanakkale Bridge

ÇANAKKALE

Four monuments symbolizing huge cannonballs a soldier carried on his back amid the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 have been brought to the Çanakkale Strait with a ship and will be assembled on the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge.

The bridge that will connect the northwestern province of Çanakkale’s Lapseki district on the Anatolian side with Gelibolu district on the European side will be inaugurated on March 18 by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The four replicas of the cannonballs, each weighing 75 tons, were built in a shipyard in the province of Bursa Gemlik district.

After a day trip, the 20-meter-long monuments were delivered to officials in Çanakkale on late March 3.

The work to assemble them onto the bridge has started.

The man behind one of the most heroic stories amid the Gallipoli campaign was named “Seyit Ali,” known as “Corporal Seyit,” who was born in 1889.

He was an artilleryman at Fort Rumeli Mecidiye in Çanakkale when the allied forces started an attack on March 18, 1915. During the fight, the crane carrying cannonballs to cranes broke.

Corporal Seyit lifted cannonballs, each weighing 275 kilos, himself to place them into cannons and fire on enemy ships.

The March 18, 1915 victory gave the country a massive morale boost that enabled it to wage the War of Independence and eventually, in 1923, form a republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

The construction of the Çanakkale 1915 Bridge began on March 18, 2017, with more than 5,000 workers taking part in the construction that lasted around five years.