Dardanelles

A Turkish-Korean consortium has been invited to sign a contract after winning the tender of the planned 1915 Çanakkale Bridge to be built over the Dardanelles Strait, a top Turkish official said Feb. 11. 

Ankara’s mayor stated that an earthquake that recently hit Turkey’s northwest was probably caused by the followers of cleric Fethulah Gulen’s organization, blamed for masterminding the July coup as well.

Turkey's highways authority has received bids from four international consortiums to build, operate, and maintain a new 10 billion-Turkish Lira ($2.61 billion) suspension bridge over the Dardanelles Strait, the authority said Jan. 26.

A total of 24 companies have taken specifications for Turkey's 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, planned to be completed and opened in 1923, Transportation, Maritime Affairs and Communications Minister Ahmet Arslan has said.

Four of the companies are from Japan, three are from China, two are from South Korea and one is from Italy, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Jan. 18. 

The Anadolu Hamidiye Bastion, built by the Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1892 to provide security for the Dardanelles, has been given a controversial makeover that has resulted in the desctruction of much the facility's green area.

Two fuel tankers collided at the entrance of the Dardanelles Strait early on Nov. 30, Doğan News Agency has reported.

The ancient city of Troy, located in Tevfikiye village in the northwestern province of Çanakkale and placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998, is one of the most popular sites for tourists visiting the region. The ancient city received 480,418 local and foreign tourists last year.

Turkey's only official Çannakkale collector, Seyit Ahmet S?lay, has dedicated his life to collecting objects from the Battle of Çanakkale. Now, he wants to open a private museum dedicated to artifacts from the war, lamenting how many private museums featuring objects from the battle are fake.

Turkey commemorated its fallen on March 18 on the 101th anniversary of the Ottomans' World War I victory over Allied fleets attempting to break through the Strait of Dardanelles in the northwestern province of Çanakkale. 

Some historians give credit for the original idea of carving zones of influence out of the "sick man of Europe," the Ottoman Empire, to Sergey Sazanov, who was the Russian foreign minister before and during the First World War.