Dardanelles << `dahr` duh NEHLZ >> is a strait that joins the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara. The strait is part of a waterway that leads from the landlocked Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Also part of this waterway is the Bosporus, a strait joining the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The word Dardanelles comes from the ancient Greek city of Dardanus, on Asia’s side of the strait. The ancient Greeks called this strait the Hellespont.
Features.
At its narrowest point, the Dardanelles is about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) wide from the European shore to the Asiatic. The average width of the strait is 3 to 4 miles (5 to 6 kilometers). It is about 38 miles (60 kilometers) long, and the average depth is 200 feet (60 meters). It usually has a strong surface current in the direction of the Aegean Sea, but a powerful undercurrent flows east and carries salty water through the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus into the Black Sea. This undercurrent keeps the Black Sea from becoming a freshwater body.
History.
In 480 B.C., Xerxes I of Persia built a bridge of boats across the Dardanelles near Abydos and led an army over it to invade Europe. In 334 B.C., the Macedonian king Alexander the Great led his army over the Dardanelles into Asia. Hundreds of years later, the strait was important to the defense of the Byzantine Empire. After that empire fell, the Ottoman Empire ruled the Dardanelles. See Byzantine Empire.
In 1841, the great powers of Europe—the United Kingdom, France, Prussia, and Austria—agreed to give the Ottomans control of the passage of ships through the Dardanelles. This agreement was renewed in 1856, 1871, and 1878.
During World War I (1914-1918), several battles were fought between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire over control of the Dardanelles. The most famous of these occurred on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the southern end of the strait. In April 1915, the main Allied force landed at the tip of the peninsula. Troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at Gaba Tepe, in an area later called Anzac Cove. A second ANZAC landing occurred in August at Suvla Bay. However, the Allies never penetrated far inland, and the campaign was a failure. Many thousands of soldiers were killed and wounded in stalemated trench warfare before the last Allied troops withdrew in January 1916. See ANZAC.
The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 opened the Dardanelles to all nations. In 1936, the Montreux Convention gave Turkey permission to remilitarize the strait.
Early in World War II (1939-1945), the strait was closed to all ships except those with special permission from Turkey. Although the possession of the Dardanelles was threatened during the war, Turkey kept control of this important waterway. After World War II, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted to gain control of the Dardanelles. The Western powers supported Turkey’s rights to the strategic strait.
