Between Life and Death: The Eastern Black Sea People on the Western Front

Some of the commanders and soldiers who were at the forefront of the National Struggle, which the Turks fought to protect the independence and territorial integrity of their homeland, came to the front from the Eastern Black Sea Region. Considering the administrative division of the relevant period, there were six cities within the region called Trabzon Province. According to official records, approximately six hundred and eighteen people who were born in these cities and participated in the National Struggle were martyred. In the National Struggle to protect the borders determined in the Misak-ı Millî, the Western Front was the front where the most casualties occurred. For this reason, the study focuses on the Western Front, and 13 battlefields where martyrs were concentrated were selected to limit the subject of the article. As it is understood from the evaluation of the data analysed in the study, soldiers recruited from the Eastern Black Sea region took part in the same units many times and fought side by side on the same fronts. Looking at the records published by the General Staff and accessible through the “Martyr Information Gateway”, the interactive system of the Ministry of National Defence, it was possible to determine the identity information of most of the martyrs, the name of their military units, the place of martyrdom and the date of martyrdom, although not complete. In this context, the movements of martyrs in the battlefields of the units to which they belonged will be monitored, and martyrdom will no longer be just a number, but the story of the struggle and the places where martyrdom was achieved will be told. Apart from the units and 13 battlefields that could not be tracked due to incomplete information, other battlefields where we know that the Eastern Black Sea people fought will be given in the appendix. The most important sources of the study are official records and memoirs.

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