The Baku Turkish Martyrs' Memorial (, ) is a memorial dedicated to the Ottoman soldiers killed during the

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

. It is situated within the

Martyrs' Lane Martyrs' Lane or Alley of Martyrs (), formerly known as the Kirov Park, is a cemetery and memorial in Baku, Azerbaijan dedicated to those killed by the Soviet Army during Black January 1990 and in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War of 1988–1994. H ...

() in

Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...

. It consists of a monument, an alley with name plates of the martyrs and a mosque.

Overview

1,130 Turkish soldiers and officers of the Army of Islam were killed in action in the

Battle of Baku The Battle of Baku (, , ) took place in August and September 1918 between the Ottoman– Azerbaijani coalition forces led by Nuri Pasha and Bolshevik– ARF Baku Soviet forces, later succeeded by the British–Armenian– White Russian forces ...

Caucasus Campaign The Caucasus campaign comprised armed conflicts between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, later including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus, the German Empire, the Central Caspian Dict ...

, who fought alongside the Azerbaijani forces against the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

s– Armenian Dashnaks and Baku Soviets in 1918. The monument was designed by Turkish architects Hüseyin Bütüner and Hilmi Güner in the form of a two-story

pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

frustum In geometry, a ; (: frusta or frustums) is the portion of a polyhedron, solid (normally a pyramid (geometry), pyramid or a cone (geometry), cone) that lies between two parallel planes cutting the solid. In the case of a pyramid, the base faces a ...

with square bases, of which truncated corners are carved out so that it appears as a sort of

octagonal In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a hex ...

frustum. It is covered by red

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

having

star and crescent The conjoined representation of a star and a crescent is used in various historical contexts, including as a prominent symbol of the Ottoman Empire, and in contemporary times, as a national symbol by some countries, and by some Muslims as a sym ...

figures made of pure white

marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...

on each of the four main faces that resembles the Turkish national flag. On one side, an inscription is carved underneath the star and crescent figure. On the flagpoles behind the monument, flags of Turkey and Azerbaijan wave. On the surrounding walls of the alley to the monument, the names of the martyrs with their military rank, hometown and death place are displayed side by side. A mosque, built by the Turkish

Presidency of Religious Affairs A presidency is an Administration (government), administration or the Executive (government), executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of President (government title), president of a state or na ...

and opened on June 28, 1996, is situated next to the monument. The inauguration of the monument took place in presence of Turkish President

Süleyman Demirel Sami Süleyman Gündoğdu Demirel (; 1 November 1924 – 17 June 2015) was a Turkish people, Turkish politician, engineer, and statesman who served as the List of Presidents of Turkey, 9th President of Turkey from 1993 to 2000. He previously serv ...

and Azerbaijani President

Heydar Aliyev Heydar Alirza oghlu Aliyev (10 May 1923 – 12 December 2003) was an Azerbaijani politician who was a Soviet party boss in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic from 1969 to 1982, and the third president of Azerbaijan from October 1993 to ...

with a prestigious ceremony on September 15, 1999. Mosque of the Martyrs in Baku

A fountain in the mosque yard was demolished by the governor of Baku following tensions in the

Azerbaijan–Turkey relations Relations have always been strong between Azerbaijan and Turkey, the only two predominantly Turkic peoples, Turkic countries located west of the Caspian Sea and east of the Mediterranean Sea. Former Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev often descri ...

in 2001. In April 2009, the nearby Mosque of the Martyrs was closed by Azerbaijani authorities, and, , it was still out of use even though

Mehmet Görmez Mehmet Görmez (born 1959) is the former President of the Presidency of Religious Affairs ( from November 2010 to 31 July 2017, commonly known as ''Diyanet'') and as such legally the highest level Islamic scholar in Turkey and the Turkish Republi ...

, the president of the Turkish Religious Affairs, was permitted to pray in the mosque during his visit to Baku.

References

{{reflist Buildings and structures in Baku 1999 establishments in Azerbaijan Buildings and structures completed in 1999 Turkish military memorials and cemeteries outside Turkey

Overview

See also

References