Guide
First thing to know: the ship you see is not the original. The Gazi Alemdar Museum is an exact replica of the vessel, built to keep the events of 1920-21 in memory and opened as a museum on 8 August 2008.
The story it commemorates is a local one with national consequences. When the First World War began in 1914 the operating rights to the coal mines were given to the Germans; in reprisal the Russians shelled the coast around Karadeniz Ereğli at intervals for two years. After the war, as European states occupied and divided Anatolia, the French came to Karadeniz Ereğli but did not manage to take it.
The Alemdar was a small warship that patriots smuggled out of occupied İstanbul during the War of Independence, and the French, who controlled Zonguldak and the Black Sea, wanted it. On 9 February 1920 the men bringing her in ran her aground in Karadeniz Ereğli harbour rather than surrender her. The French, angered that the crew had taken refuge in the town, tried to occupy it and were resisted by the townspeople; they shelled the coastal districts, the hospital among them, and were then counter-attacked when the Alemdar was secretly refloated.
On 18 June 1921 French officers and soldiers taken prisoner by the people of Karadeniz Ereğli obliged their side to sign an agreement with a Turkish republic that did not yet exist. The provincial directorate presents this as Türkiye's first international agreement of the War of Independence and as recognition of the National Liberation Government, and describes the fighting here as the first and only naval engagement of that war.
