The Turkish Memorial

The story

The Turkish memorial stands on David Tuviyahu Boulevard, close to the old Turkish railway station in Beersheba. It was set up in 2002 by the government of Turkey, in memory of 298 Turkish dead who fell in the battle for Beersheba. At the base of the memorial a memorial plaque for the Turkish dead was placed. The plaque is not new: originally the British set it in the entrance wall of the British military cemetery in the city, in return for the Turks having set up a monument to a British airman who fell in battle against them. The memorial stands in a plaza that was completed on 21 October 2002 in cooperation between the authorities in Israel and in Turkey; in 2008 the plaza was named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and in that same year a sculpture of his head was placed in it. On the sculpture is engraved his saying “Peace at home, peace in the world”, in three languages — Turkish, Hebrew and English. In 2010, following the events of the flotilla to Gaza, the memorial was defaced: an inscription was sprayed on it and an attempt was made to set fire to the flag of Turkey beside it.

• 1917
• Commemoration
• Ottoman
• War
• Beersheba