Dardanelles
The Dardanelles is a 61-kilometer-long strait separating European and Asian Turkey, linking the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara. Its widest point is 7 kilometers, its narrowest only 1,600 meters. During classical antiquity the strait was known as the Hellespont, and its modern Turkish name is Canakkale Bogazi. The Dardanelles, together with the Bosporus Strait farther north, has been a major crossing point between Europe and Asia and also controls navigation between the Black and Mediterranean Seas.
The ancient city of Troy was located near the Dardanelles, and both Xerxes I of Persia (c. 519–465 BCE) and Alexander of Macedon (356–323 BCE) crossed the strait during their military campaigns. During the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, the strait was used in the defense of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and was fortified for this purpose. In World War I, the Allied powers attempted to pass through the strait, but two early attempts, in 1915, were unsuccessful. The second of these, the Gallipoli campaign, resulted in great loss of life. In 1918, the Allies passed through the strait and took Constantinople. Following the war, several international treaties demilitarized and internationalized the Dardanelles, but the Montreux Convention of 1936 allowed Turkish remilitarization while guaranteeing access to foreign vessels. The strait remains important as a shipping lane for Black Sea nations.
Further Reading
Luce, John Victor. (1998) Celebrating Homer's Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
A cruise ship docks in the harbor at Canakkale on the Dardanelles. (WOLFGANG KAEHLER/CORBIS)Zurcher, Erik Jan. (1993) Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris.
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