Sacred duty for locals looking over Gallipoli heroes
In the cold earth where their mates grudgingly left them are 7307 Diggers who were buried on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915 - the fallen Anzacs who never made it home.
For the past 90-odd years, Mustafa Ayhan's family has visited the grave of each one of them, at least once a week without fail.
Every day, in summer heatwaves or -20C winter snowstorms, Mr Ayhan can be found wandering among the 31 cemeteries that dot the peninsula.
Occasionally, on Anzac Day or when a visiting descendant comes to pay their respects, they recognise the sun-browned Turkish man and shake his hand.
Mr Ayhan, like his father before him, is the gardener who tends the graves of Australia's Anzac heroes.
For the past 30 years, the 55-year-old has planted and watered flowers and grass.
He has trimmed trees, cultivated borders and cut edges.
Already training his 10-year-old son to take his place, Mr Ayhan said the work was much more than just a job for his family.
"My father worked here," he said.
"And it is a very sad place. But I enjoy working here, because the soldiers who passed away here, I take care of them. This is very important."
Mr Ayhan, an employee of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which maintains the cemeteries at Gallipoli, does not manage the task alone.
That would be impossible.
There is 72,834sqm of turf to cut, and often replace, 2310sqm of pines to be trimmed and 3973m of grave borders to be planted. There are also 1500 bulbs, 350 rose bushes and 567 shrubs to be planted each year.
All need to be watered, in some places by hand.
But like Mr Ayhan, the other five locals employed to care for the resting places of Australia's fallen are the sons of fathers who did so before them.
Together, along with six stonemasons charged with repairing headstones constantly damaged by the harsh elements and frequent earthquakes, they battle the rugged nature of the hills above Anzac Cove to keep the grounds pristine and serene.
Mr Ayhan said he and colleagues saw their work as a sacred duty, a mission handed out long ago by the hero and founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The man who held back the Anzacs at Gallipoli and went on to become Turkey's first president famously paid homage to his Australian enemies at the end of the Great War.
"Those heroes that shed blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country," he said.
"There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side-by-side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears."
Mr Ayhan said he followed Mr Ataturk's missive in heart and deed.
"Ataturk wrote this in stone. It is what I believe, too," he said.
Mr Ayhan said there were many places with many bones outside the graveyards, missing Australians and Turkish soldiers, lying side-by-side on old battlefields.
Mr Ayhan, however, knows who they all are. "They were your Australian grandfathers. Now they are my grandfathers, too," he said.
