When German forces occupied Greece in April 1941, they requisitioned food supplies and left the civilian population to survive on what little remained. The Royal Navy maintained a blockade of Axis-controlled territory, which cut off normal food imports. The combination was catastrophic. Historian Mark Mazower estimates that around 300,000 people of all ages died in the famine that followed — a number concentrated especially in Athens and the islands during the winter of 1941–42. The Greek Orthodox Church had established the National Greek War Relief Association in the United States in October 1940, raising funds and organising relief efforts. Allied commanders were initially reluctant to lift the blockade, since it was one of the few forms of pressure they could apply to the Axis powers. Eventually a compromise was reached: neutral Turkey would be permitted to ship grain through the blockade zone. The operation was funded primarily by the American Greek War Relief Association and the Hellenic Union of Constantinopolitans, and foodstuffs were collected inside Turkey by a nationwide campaign run by Kızılay, the Turkish Red Crescent.

The SS Kurtuluş had lived several lives before this one. Built as a dry-freight carrier — 76.5 metres long, 2,735 gross register tons capacity — she had changed flags and names multiple times before the Kalkavan brothers purchased her in 1924 to serve under the flag of the newly established Turkish Republic. The Tavilzade brothers bought her in 1934 and gave her the name she carried into history. In 1941, the Turkish government leased her for humanitarian relief. Red Crescent symbols were painted large on both sides of the hull so she would not be mistaken for a military vessel. After receiving permission from London to cross the blockade zone, she departed from Karaköy Pier in Istanbul on 6 October 1941 on her first voyage. When she reached Piraeus, the International Red Cross took charge of unloading and distributing the supplies. Over four voyages, the SS Kurtuluş carried a total of 6,735 tons of food aid to Greece. The people she was feeding were people whose army Turkish President İsmet İnönü had personally fought against during the Turkish War of Independence, just nineteen years earlier. He signed the relief mission anyway.

She left Istanbul on 18 February 1942, loaded and heading for Piraeus again. On the night of 20 February, a storm caught the old ship in the Sea of Marmara. Heavy weather drove her onto rocks off the coast near Saraylar village, on the north shore of Marmara Island. She did not sink immediately. Her 34 crew members were able to reach Marmara Island before she went under at 9:15 the following morning. All of them survived. The place where she sank was later named Cape Kurtuluş in her memory. The wreck lay undiscovered for decades. In the summer of 2005, diver Professor Erdoğan Okuş and his team located the site, finding the remains mostly demolished, with wreckage scattered across the sea floor. A documentary about her mission — *Barışı Taşıyan Vapur: Kurtuluş*, or *The Steamship That Carried Peace* — debuted in June 2006.

Turkey did not stop when it lost the Kurtuluş. The relief operation continued until 1946, carried on by other ships: the SS Dumlupınar, SS Tunç, SS Konya, SS Güneysu, and SS Aksu. One of these later voyages brought something beyond food. The SS Dumlupınar transported around 1,000 sick Greek children aged 13 to 16 to Istanbul, where they could recuperate in a safer environment. The SS Kurtuluş had been built in England, sailed under several flags, renamed, leased to a government, painted with mercy symbols, and sent through a naval blockade to feed civilians in a country that had once been an enemy. She carried out her mission four times. On the fifth, the sea took her. Her name, *liberation*, endures in the name of a cape on a small island where her crew stepped ashore and survived.