Turkey In Photos - Gallipoli

History
Soon after the start of World War I it became obvious to the Allies that Russia could not be supplied by sea, nor a Balkan front opened against the Central Powers, unless Ottoman Turkey was completely eliminated.  Winston Churchill, in his earliest important post as First Lord of the Admiralty, reasoned that the quickest way to accomplish this would be to force the Dardanelles with a fleet and bombard Istanbul into submission.  A combined Anglo-French armada made several half-hearted attempts on the straits during November 1914, which were repulsed, but they returned in earnest on March 18, 1915.  This time they managed to penetrate less than 10km up the waterway before striking numerous Turkish mines, losing half a dozen vessels and hundreds of men.  The Allies retreated and command squabbles erupted as a result of Lord Kitchener’s insistence that the Commonwealth Armies should hereafter be paramount.  Regrouped at Mudros harbour on the Greek island of Limnos, the joint expeditionary forces took several months to prepare an amphibious assault on the Turkish positions along the peninsula. During this time another naval sprint down the Dardanelles may have succeeded, but instead the delay gave the Turks the chance to strengthen their own defences.

The plan eventually formulated by the Commonwealth and French commanders called for an Anglo-French landing at Cape Helles, Seddülbahir and Motto Bay at the mouth of the straits, and a simultaneous ANZAC (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) assault at Kabatepe beach 13km north. The two forces were to drive toward each other, link up and neutralize the Turkish shore batteries controlling the Dardanelles.

This rather hare-brained scheme ran into trouble from the start.  At dawn on April 25, 1915, the Anglo-French brigades at the southernmost cape were pinned down by accurate Turkish fire; a toehold was eventually established, but it was never expanded during the rest of the campaign, and the French contingent was virtually decimated.  The fate of the ANZAC landing was even more horrific: owing to a drifting signal buoy, the Aussies and Kiwis disembarked not on the wide, flat sands of Kabatepe, but at a cramped and Turkish-dominated cove next to Ariburnu, 2km north. Despite appalling casualties the ANZACs advanced inland in staggered parties over the next day, goaded by their commanders, to threaten the Turkish strongpoint of Conkbayiri overhead.  As at the other landing, however, little permanent progress was made despite a supplementary British landing at Cape Suvla to the north; except during ferocious battles for the summit in early August, both sides settled into long term trench warfare.  Finally around Christmas 1915, the Allies gave up, with the last troops leaving Seddulbahir on January 8, 1916.  Churchill’s career, among others, went into temporary eclipse.

The reasons for the Allied defeat were many.  In addition to the chanciness of the basic strategy, the callousness and incompetence on the part of the Allied commanders - who often countermanded each other’s orders or failed to press advantages with reinforcements - cannot be underestimated.  With hindsight you cannot help but wonder why the Allies didn’t concentrate more on Cape Suvla and the flat, wide valley behind, skirting the fortified Ottoman heights to reach the Dardanelles’ northwest shore.  On the Turkish side, much of the credit for the successful strategical resistance must go to one person, Mustafa Kemal, then a relatively obscure lieutenant-colonel, later better known as Ataturk.  As ranking officer at Conkbayiri for the duration of the campaign, his role in the Turkish victory is legendary.  He seemed to enjoy a charmed life, narrowly escaping death on several occasions and aside from his tactical skills, is credited with various other superhuman accomplishments - primarily that of rekindling morale, by threats, persuasion or example, among often outgunned and outnumbered Ottoman infantrymen.

Ironically, both sides suffered nearly identical losses to maintain a status quo.  Half a million men were deployed by defenders and attackers alike, albeit in stages; of these well over fifty percent were killed, wounded or missing, with total deaths estimated at 160,000. The carnage among the ANZACs in particular was grossly disproportionate to the island nations’ populations; indeed the Allied top brass cavalierly regarded the “colonials” as expendable- cannon fodder, an attitude that has not been forgotten in certain circles.

The Region
The whole war area in Gallipoli is now either fertile or cloaked in thick scrub and pine forest alive with birds, making it difficult to imagine the bare desolation of 1915. Recently the last 20 km or so of the landmass has been designated a national historical park, and since 1985 some effort has been made by the Turkish authorities to signpost road junctions and sites. This was complemented in 1990 by the Australian and New Zealand governments, who took the occasion of the 75th anniversary observations to add various facilities and markers of their own to join those previ ously placed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.