Latest news with #Canakkale
CTV News
2 days ago
- Climate
- CTV News
Turkiye fires close busy shipping route
Wildfires in Turkiye forced authorities to suspend shipping in the busy Dardanelles Strait and evacuate hundreds of people on Friday as firefighters battled the blazes, officials said. Turkey 'temporarily' shut the strait in both directions, the transport ministry said, after fires broke out in the northwestern province of Canakkale and spread, fanned by strong winds. Authorities evacuated 72 people from a public hospital and 57 from a retirement home, farms and forestry minister Ibrahim Yumakli said. He said 24 people were hospitalised for smoke inhalation. The fire destroyed houses in Sacakli, one of three villages that were evacuated, state news agency Anadolu reported. Images broadcast by Turkish media showed firefighters being forced to abandon one of their trucks on a forest road as the flames engulfed it. Yumakli said winds up to 80 kilometres an hour were complicating the firefighting effort. Turkish authorities forecast winds of up to 75 kilometres an hour with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius. Linking the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, the Dardanelles Strait is a popular tourist destination, the site of the ancient ruins of the city of Troy. Turkey has been enduring a heatwave for several weeks. In July, 14 people died while fighting fires in the west of the country. Authorities say the risk of fires will remain high until October. Scientists say human-caused climate change is raising the likelihood and intensity of wildfires. Nearly 46,000 ships passed through the Dardanelles Strait in 2024, authorities say.
The National
2 days ago
- Climate
- The National
Turkey closes Dardanelles strait due to forest fire
Turkey on Friday closed the Dardanelles strait to shipping due to forest fires in the area. A statement provided to The National by Turkey's Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure said ship traffic in the Dardanelles had been "temporarily suspended in both directions due to the fires in Canakkale." An official was unable to confirm a schedule from the ministry's directorate of coastal safety that suggested the closure would continue until midnight. A regional governor said firefighters were working from air and land to tackle the rural fires. More than a dozen people have been killed amid fires and searing summer temperatures in Turkey in recent weeks, at times going above 50°C. About 100 ships a day pass typically through the Dardanelles strait, which together with the Bosphorus forms the Turkish Straits that link the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas to the Black Sea.
BBC News
2 days ago
- BBC News
Wildfires force Turkey to shut Dardanelles Straits to shipping
The Dardanelles Strait has been temporarily shut to maritime traffic due to large forest fires raging in north-western Turkey, the country's transport ministry has major international waterway was shut as a precautionary measure, it said, as the blazes spread near the city of Canakkale, where a number of residents have been firefighters have been deployed to try to contain the fires. Specialist firefighting planes and helicopters are also in Dardanelles links the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Together with the Bosporus Strait, it serves as a vital route for commercial shipping between Europe and Asia.
Daily Mail
15-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Groundbreaking Trojan War discovery may prove legendary tale true
Archaeologists digging at the ruins of ancient Troy have unearthed fresh evidence of a violent Bronze Age conflict, one that mirrors Homer's Iliad. According to Homer's Iliad, the war began after Paris of Troy abducted Helen, wife of the Spartan king, triggering a Greek siege lasting 10 years. The most famous scene of the tale is the wooden horse used by the Greeks to sneak into the city and destroy it from within. Now, a team of Turkish researchers have uncovered dozens of clay and smoothed river rock sling stones, unearthed just outside what would have been the palace walls, along with arrowheads, charred buildings, and hastily buried human skeletons. Together, experts say, the clues paint a chilling picture of close-range fighting and a sudden, catastrophic fall, just as the ancient Greeks described. 'This concentration of sling stones in such a small area suggests intense fighting, either a desperate defense or a full-scale assault,' said Professor Rustem Aslan of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, who is leading the excavation. The sling stones, smoothed to aerodynamic perfection, were one of the Bronze Age's deadliest weapons, capable of cracking skulls at range when hurled from leather slings. The stones found at the site date to around 3,200 to 3,600 years ago, exactly the period believed to match the Trojan War, which according to Greek historians took place around 1184 BC. For centuries, scholars dismissed Homer's Iliad as pure myth, a poetic fantasy centered on a quarrel over Helen, the 'face that launched a thousand ships,' and a wooden horse that tricked an entire city. But the new finds suggest there may have been a real war behind the legend. This summer's excavation, part of the Legacy for the Future Project, backed by Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, focused on the palace, marketplace, and defensive walls of Troy, a heavily fortified city once known as Wilusa in Hittite texts. There, archaeologists discovered a cache of war relics: bone tools, a pointed 'biz' used for piercing leather armor, and even a knucklebone likely used as a gaming die, hinting at the lives of soldiers waiting for battle. But it's the destruction layer, first uncovered in 2024 and now further expanded, that has stunned researchers. It contains burned ruins, broken weapons, and human remains buried in haste, signs of a sudden, brutal attack, not a slow decline. The team's discovery, combined with arrowheads from previous digs, strongly suggests close-quarters fighting erupted in this part of the city, a likely battleground where defenders made a final stand. It also lines up with ancient texts. Both Herodotus and Eratosthenes, Greek historians writing centuries later, claimed the Trojan War was a real event, while Roman poet Virgil immortalized its aftermath in the Aeneid, describing survivors fleeing the burning city. According to legend, one such survivor, Aeneas, would go on to found the line that led to Rome itself. Ancient Troy was no backwater. Its location near the Dardanelles made it a vital trade hub between Europe and Asia, rich with goods and strategically placed to control naval access. The city boasted stone towers, long walls, and a complex urban structure, making it a prized, and well-defended, target. Modern archaeologists have worked the site since the 1870s, but attention has now turned to a very specific window: 1500 to 1200BC, the era most commonly associated with the Iliad. Experts widely agree that Troy existed, but now, many also believe it suffered a real war during the Bronze Age collapse, a time when empires across the Mediterranean crumbled amid invasion, rebellion, and mass migration. There's still no physical evidence of a wooden horse, and scholars caution it may have been poetic symbolism, a metaphor for subterfuge or betrayal.
