Saturday, April 25

Gallipoli Remembered

131,000 died in the doomed campaign.

The Gallipoli campaign in World War I took place on the Gallipoli peninsula, Turkey, in the Ottoman Empire from April 1915 to January 1916. We mark the 100 year remembrance. 

The peninsula forms the northern bank of the Dardanelles, a straight that provided a sea route to the Russian Empire, one of the Allied powers during the war. Intending to secure it, Russia's allies Britain and France launched a naval attack followed by an amphibius landing on the peninsula, with the aim of capturing the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (Istanbul). It failed disastrously.

The campaign was one of the greatest Ottoman victories during the war. In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the nation's history : a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. 

The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who first rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli. 

The campaign is often considered as marking the birth of national consciousness in Australia and New Zealand.
(source: Wiki and others)