| The Nek Cemetery | |
|---|---|
| Commonwealth War Graves Commission | |
 | |
| Used for those deceased August–December 1915 | |
| Established | 1919 |
| Location | 40°14′33″N26°17′24″E / 40.24250°N 26.29000°E Coordinates: 40°14′33″N26°17′24″E / 40.24250°N 26.29000°E |
| Total burials | 326 |
| Burials by nation | |
| |
| Burials by war | |
World War I: 326 | |
| Statistics source: Battlefields 14-18 | |
The Nek Cemetery is a small Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery located near Suvla Bay on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars. The Commission is also responsible for commemorating Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action during World War II. The Commission was founded by Sir Fabian Ware and constituted through Royal Charter in 1917 named the Imperial War Graves Commission. The change to the present name took place in 1960.
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in the southern part of East Thrace, the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles strait to the east.
Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Greece and Bulgaria to its northwest; Georgia to its northeast; Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the south. Ankara is its capital but Istanbul is the country's largest city. Approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority; the size of the Kurdish population is a subject of dispute with estimates placing the figure at anywhere from 12 to 25 per cent of the population.
The cemetery was constructed following the Armistice in 1919 on the site of the Battle of the Nek, at which time the ground was still covered with the remains of Australian 8th and 10th Light Horse troopers killed in the battle four years previously. It is likely that they form the majority of the unknown graves in the cemetery. [1] The cemetery has the graves of only five identified soldiers and special memorials to another five known to be buried there.
The Battle of the Nek was a small World War I battle fought as part of the Gallipoli campaign. "The Nek" was a narrow stretch of ridge on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The name derives from the Afrikaans word for a "mountain pass" but the terrain itself was a perfect bottleneck and easy to defend, as had been proven during an Ottoman attack in May. It connected the Anzac trenches on the ridge known as "Russell's Top" to the knoll called "Baby 700" on which the Ottoman defenders were entrenched. The immediate area became known as Anzac, with the allied landing site becoming Anzac Cove, after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
