Gallipoli | ArticHaeology / Articles on History

GALLIPOLI
The WAR of The Firsts

The Gallipoli campaign which starts with a naval attack & than continues with an invasion attempt of allied forces during WWI, is one of the most important and influensive wars during the history considering the World-Changing results. İt can be seen as a small regional war, but, than is understood that it wasn't when we consider who the participants of the war were and how did the results of the campaign influnced the routine flow of time which ends with a great change on history.

HMS-Cornwallis-in-action-at-the-Dardanel

The reason why that war has to be accepted as a unique historical events, can be explained with the results below.

A-) NEW FRIENDSHIP

İt is the first and the only war which change fighting two nations into close friends of each other following the end of the conflict. These nations were Australians who sent their Anzak troops to gallipoli under the control of British Empire & as a part of United Kingdom & the Turkish people the soldiers of which defended the country under the flag of Ottoman Empire.
The sons of these two nations were trying to kill each other without knowing why they were doing that. they killed each other without having hate and prejudgement. They hated each other neither while they were trying to do that nor they have gone back to homes. they always honored each other as brave warriors. The Australians have left the bodies of their sons in the lands of Anatolia, and they brought back to home with memories.
Following the conflict the great leader of Turks Mustafa Kemal Atatürk issued an official letter for the familes of the Australian soldiers whose bodies were left and burried in Gallipoli.
The heartfelt speech of Atatürk is now in on a monument in Australia and is as follows.

Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

The reported words of Mustafa Kemal Atat

The developments after the war made two countries close to each other. Large monuments and cemetaries were built in the area where the war had happened. The city ''Çanakkale'' and the district Gallipoli is visited every year by thousands of Australians and New zealandians on the ''Anzak day'' which is 25th of April.

Nowadays, it is a well-preserved national park, with rolling fields of olive trees and patches of tomatoes, watermelons and sunflowers lending a rural ambience to the solemn places of the dead. It is hallowed ground for battlefield tourists, mostly Turks and Australians, who are coming in ever greater numbers, taken by ferry across the straits, to pay homage to their nations’ creation stories.

Almost a hundred years ago, it was the place where World War I was supposed to turn in the Allies’ favor, but instead it became one of the great slaughters of the Great War.

B-) EFFECT ON THE REPUTATION OF BRITISH EMPIRE

The Great British Empire was one of the strongest Empires of the world which has a wery powerfull army. İt was depicted as the Empire on which the sun never goes down. Since that time they were never defeated excluding the American liberty war.

They have attacked to dardanelles with a huge armada and with the other warships of the allied forces. The armada has been defeted and lost 3 important warships which were the Admiral ship Queen Elizabeth, İrresistable and the French warship Bouvet.

The later conflict aiming to invade Gallipoli were also an unsuccessfull act and finalized with hundreds of thousans of deaths from both sides.

This result effected the other controlled nations' point of wiew and lit the fire of revolutionary thought about freedom.

The great revolutionary leader of İndia Gandhi is famous with his quote as follows.

''Untill the time when English army was defeted by Mustafa Kemal, I used to think that the God was English too.''

C-Gallipoli, a Campaign That Laid Ground for National Identities

The Gallipoli campaign is still fresh in the minds of British and the French and they consider the campaign as one of the greatest & embarassing battles to mark in their histories. Whereas, for the Turks and the Australians, though, the Gallipoli campaign has taken on an outsize importance as the bloody event that became the foundation of a modern national identity. In defeat, the Australians gained what many historians have described as the first embers of a national consciousness, apart from their British colonial legacy. The campaign is seen today as the beginning of a real Australian self-identity.

Just as the Australians, the Gallipoli campaign was the wery first footsteps of the new Turkish nation which would be erected from the ashes of Ottoman Dynasty which can not be described as a pure Turkish family. After the victory against the allied forces which invaded Anatolia as a result of the defeat in WWI, a young republic was declared after having been ruled by a sultan for about 600 years.

In victory, the Turks ended decades of Ottoman defeats on the edges of the empire and emerged with a new sense of nationalism — and a leader, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk, who would lead the country to independence after the war ended. Mustafa Kemal, then a young officer, met the invading Australians with his men on the day of the landing and earned a reputation as a military genius for his success.

Click on photo to zoom in

1-) The campaign which resulted with ''Communism''

One of the purposes of the naval attack held by allied forces, was in fact to pass through the Dardanelles and sent aid to the Russian Romanov Dynasty which was also a member of allied forces who were against the other group consist of Germans & Ottomans. those days Russia was in conflict with revalutionary winds in politics leaded by bolsheviks. if we analyse the historical period in such a way, we reach at the conculşions as explained below.
    -Allied forces couldn't pass the Dardanelles and the Russian Romanov Dynasty couldn't receive aid.
    -While these were happening, a bolshevic riot started in Russia and they faced with a 3 years long civil war.
-When civil war begins, the Russians had to leave the areas at the eastern front of Ottoman empire which they have been keeping invaded for a period.
    -When the Russians withdrew from the invaded areas in the eastern front of Anatolia, the  Turks could have the opportunity to move their forces from east of Anatolia to the westaern front where they would have an independence war against invading Greek army who was supported by Britain.
    -When the Communists took control of Russia, they decided to help their former enemy Turks, against the allied forces by considering the fact which is ''The enemy of my enemy is my fellow''.

İn brief, Communism could have the opportunity to survive as the reflection of the defeat of allied forces by Turks in gallipoli, besides, just as that, the Turks could have the opportunity to fight agains invaders as a result of the withdrewal of Russian army and the support of new communist government. We can say that, the Turks got the victory in the İndependence war proactively, depending on the victory in a conflict which was years before that.