These prisoners of war were mostly transferred to prisoner-of-war camps in Myanmar, which was under British colonial rule at the time.

[3] According to Frontier Myanmar journalist James T. Davies, Prisoners at Thayetmyo spent their time raising chickens, playing cards or draughts, and arranging sporting competitions to keep fit and healthy.

They also kept busy writing letters to send home; about 10,000 a month, the Red Cross report shows.

The cemetery in Thayet where the soldiers were buried soon fell into disrepair, though in 2012 the Turkish government paid for it to be restored in order to serve as a memorial (after Turkish-Myanmar relations began to improve under the presidency of Thein Sein.

In 2016, Myanmar state media sources reported that officials from the Turkish embassy in Yangon had contracted a local firm to undertake maintenance for the facility.