Kiwi Medals

Being a Kiwi I have an attachment to the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. When I visited Turkey in 2012 I made sure that I got to Anzac Cove and Chunik Bair. I scooped a little bit of soil from there into a container and dragged that home. Elsewhere here I have an Ottoman award and have been looking for an Ottoman era belt buckle for a while. This one has the toghra (personal cypher) of Mehmet V, the penultimate Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, under the national emblem. Notice how similar this buckle is in design to the Jerry ones. The Germans had both feet in the Turkish Army prior to the Great War, providing technical advice and equipment designs.

Turkish soldiers at Sedd el Barr in 1915, prior to the invasion

This entry was posted on September 3, 2016 at 9:44 PM and is filed under Belts & Belt Buckles with tags Gallipoli, Ottoman Empire, Turkey, WW1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.