Turkish frigate arrives at Tokyo port

TOKYO (A.A) – August 9, 2011 – TCG Gemlik Frigate of Turkey arrived at Tokyo Port on Tuesday.
TCG Gemlik has been in Japan since August 7 to attend the ceremonies to commemorate Turkish Ottoman navy sailors and officers who were killed over a century ago when their ship (Ertugrul Frigate) sank off-coast of the town of Kushimoto.
TCG Gemlik's commander Admiral Sinan Ertugrul said that the distance between Turkey and Japan was 9,000 kilometers, adding that one of the missions of naval forces was to make distant countries closer to each other.
Ertugrul said that within the scope of the port visit of TCG Gemlik Frigate, a delegation would visit the disaster region in Sendai too.
On Monday, Turkish frigate TCG Gemlik and her crew attended the ceremonies, laying wreaths at the Turkish cemetery and hurling flowers at the waters the Ottoman Turkish mariners were killed in the Ertugrul Frigate which sank on September 12, 1890 after being caught up in a typhoon and drifted into a reef.
533 sailors, including the Ottoman frigate's commander Admiral Ali Osman Pasha, were killed and only sixty-nine sailors and officers survived the accident.
Those who were killed in the accident were buried in a cemetery near the Oshima village in Kushimoto.