Süleyman Pasha was the son of Orhan, the second ruler of the Ottoman beylik in the mid-fourteenth century. In 1354, Süleyman led Ottoman forces across the Dardanelles and established a permanent European presence on the Gallipoli Peninsula — the first Ottoman foothold on the western side of the straits. His tomb, a türbe in the classical Ottoman style, stands in Bolayır today. He died in 1357, thrown from his horse while hunting, before he could see how thoroughly his crossing would reshape the region. The peninsula he seized became the base from which Ottoman forces would push into Thrace and toward the Balkans. Generations of pilgrims and travelers have made their way to the tomb at Bolayır, and the site carries a particular weight for those who see Süleyman Pasha as the man who first made the Ottoman presence in Europe permanent.

Namık Kemal was born in 1840 and spent his career as one of the most influential writers the Ottoman Empire produced. A poet, playwright, and journalist, he was a central figure among the Young Ottomans — a group of intellectuals who argued for constitutional reform in the 1860s and 1870s. His play Vatan yahut Silistre, staged in Istanbul in 1873, caused such excitement that the authorities shut it down after the first night and exiled its author. Kemal spent years in exile and prison but never stopped writing. His essays on patriotism and freedom circulated widely, and his ideas would influence the Young Turks who eventually brought constitutional reform to the empire in 1908. He died in 1888 and was buried at Bolayır, on the same peninsula where Ottoman expansion had begun five centuries before. The grave is maintained and visited today.

Bolayır sits at the narrowest part of the Gallipoli Peninsula, the isthmus that separates the Gulf of Saros from the Sea of Marmara. Its population was recorded at 1,053 in 2021 — a village by any measure, though it held town status between 1958 and the administrative reorganization of 2013. The name Bolayır appears in multiple forms across the region's languages: the traditional Greek name was Plagiari, the Bulgarian name is Bulair, and medieval sources mention a settlement called Branchialion that may be the same place. That last name is uncertain, but the location has been continuously inhabited long enough that several eras of history have left competing names for the same ground.

The isthmus at Bolayır has been contested as often as it has been settled. On 26 January 1913 (old-style calendar), in fighting known as the Battle of Bulair, Bulgarian and Ottoman forces clashed here during the First Balkan War. The Bulgarian Seventh Rila Division held the isthmus against an Ottoman amphibious assault, and the victory was significant enough that a village in Bulgaria's Varna Province was renamed Bulair in its honor, and a military march was composed to commemorate it. Two years later, the wider Gallipoli Peninsula became one of the bloodiest theaters of World War I, with the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915–1916 leaving its mark on the landscape and the memory of many nations. The ruins of ancient Lysimachia, the Hellenistic city founded in 309 BC, lie near the village. Bolayır is a small place, but the ground beneath it and around it has rarely been quiet for long.