The way Aussies and Kiwis visit Gallipoli has changed dramatically since the 1980s and 1990s when backpackers would slowly make their way west from Istanbul and then spend up to a week in the nearby town of Eceabat or the larger city of Canakkale across the Dardanelles.
Nowadays the majority of pilgrims zip in and out on bus tours much to the chagrin of locals. And it'll be the same this year for the centenary commemorations.
Mesut Ercel has been running the Boomerang Bar in Eceabat for almost 20 years. He's been teaching Aussies and Kiwis how to drink raki for just as long.
He sleeps on a couch in the corner and his office is a computer on a small table behind the bar.
Ercel blames the internet for increasingly robbing him of Anzac customers each April.
Whereas people used to land in Istanbul and meander down to the remote peninsula and stay a while, now it's easy to use the web to book a bus tour in advance.
People board in Istanbul at dawn and arrive at Gallipoli some five hours later.
They go straight onto the peninsula, camp overnight ahead of the dawn service, hike up to Lone Pine afterwards, and are back on their way to Turkey's largest city that afternoon.
There's no need to set foot in Eceabat or Canakkale and no time to properly explore the historic battlefields and cemeteries.
"Now everyone sits at home - reservation, reservation, reservation (on the internet) - then they are coming, visit, gone," Ercel tells AAP.
"No looking at everyone or stopping for a drink."
The owner of the Boomerang Bar also blames the bureaucratisation of the commemorations which means people can't be "free and happy".
Big changes followed the 90th anniversary in 2005 when organisers played the Bee Gees hits Stayin' Alive and You Should be Dancing on big screens and young pilgrims got drunk and slept on graves.
Authorities have worked over the past decade to ensure the services are now solemn and respectful. Alcohol is now banned.
Locals had hoped that the 100th anniversary would see people coming to stay for longer.
But long-time Gallipoli tour guide TJ - real but rarely used name Ilhami Gezici - says that's not happened. It's quiet in Eceabat less than a week out from April 25.
TJ, who met his Australian wife Bernina on one of his tours in the mid-1990s, expects the majority of the 10,000-odd Australians and New Zealanders who secured tickets in the ballot to travel southwest on Friday and go straight onto the peninsula ahead of Saturday's dawn service.
"We were expecting up to 70,000 people would come," the 44-year-old told AAP on Sunday.
"The whole town invested a lot of money in this centenary (before the crowd cap was announced) thinking a lot of people would come but now there aren't that many.
"It's very quiet apart from the cruise ships. It's very sad."
Over the past few years more and more Australians are heading to the western front instead of Gallipoli.
Crowds have been building in France at the same time as numbers have been dwindling on the Turkish peninsula since more than 10,000 flocked to Anzac Cove in 2005.
In 2014, for the first time ever, more people attended the dawn service at Villers-Bretonneux than Gallipoli.
Locals in Eceabat and Canakkle murmur that the Turkish government perhaps doesn't really want Anzacs coming to the peninsula anymore.
Turks are coming in greater numbers, however, to learn about the military campaign they won at such devastating human cost.
School children are now sent by the education department on excursions.
But for Eceabat locals, many dependent on tourism, the problem is that Turks mainly visit on weekends and, like the Anzac pilgrims, generally travel down for the day only.
Turkish tour guide Yusuf Kirca, who works for RSL Tours in Eceabat, insists the Australians he shows around the peninsula always regret not spending more time in the area.
RSL offers a two-day trip that takes in Troy and Gallipoli and a shorter one-day tour to the peninsula only.
Kirca says 80 per cent of tourists choose the one-day option.
"However when they come they always say the same thing: 'Next time we should come and stay for more time'," the 25-year-old tells AAP.
He blames the bigger travel agencies in Istanbul which cram too much into people's Turkish holidays.
But it is not all bad news for operators on the Gallipoli peninsula.
They expect the rest of the 2015 season to be busy on the back of interest generated by the centenary this week.
And there could be a spike too in pilgrims attending the dawn service itself over the next few years.
That's what happened post-2005 with 10,000 attending in 2006, 8000 in 2007 and 10,000 again in 2008 before numbers dwindled to just 4400 in 2014.
In the Boomerang on Sunday owner Ercel is daring to dream that the hordes could still materialise later this week to swap stories with him over raki.
"I wait," he says.
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