Tag: Anzacs

The reason Gallipoli failed

On the 9th of January 1916, the last remaining Allied troops on the Gallipoli peninsula were evacuated. Despite catastrophic predictions, the withdrawal went off without a hitch and the entire force escaped with only a few casualties. It was the only bright spark in a campaign marked by failure.

After naval attempts to force the Dardanelles straight failed, the amphibious landings had fared even worse. Fierce Ottoman opposition stopped the Allies in their tracks and trench warfare quickly took hold. There were heavy casualties on both sides, not only from the fighting but from the terrible conditions. After a succession of failed attacks, the decision was finally made to withdraw.

In this episode of IWM Stories, Alan Wakefield explores what went wrong at Gallipoli and why the evacuations were the only success.

Imperial War Museums

Evacuating guns and personnel from Suvla Point on rafts, December 1915.

November 5, 2022
PEACE LOOKS LIKE THIS

Peter FitzSimons

When the actual Lone Pine service finishes in the early afternoon of Anzac Day, the problem for so many Australian attendees, who haven’t slept for the previous 36 hours is that it takes as long as – and I’m not making this up – EIGHT HOURS for the jam of buses to clear. Finally, though, most of the last lot get to the wharves where a ferry awaits to take them across the straits of the Dardanelles to Cannakale. They’re all, not to put too fine a point on it, buggered, and slump in their seats. At least most of them do. Not, however, the Barker Choir and Band, some 200 strong. Even as the ferry waits for the last stragglers to arrive, the young’uns assemble on the foredeck and start to sing and play. Oh, how they sing and play. The ethereal harmonies of Waltzing Matilda, Run To You, Nearer My God To Thee, the Australian and New Zealand National anthems rise rich and beautiful into the Turkish twilight, as even the passengers on other ferries come out to watch on their verandas. They clap, they join in, some dance ‘neath the diamond sky, with one handwaving free, silhouetted by the sea. And now, the final touch. As the last stragglers arrive and the Turkish guides who have been so good to them all start to wave goodbye and walk to the bus that is to take them back to Istanbul, the Barker choir instantly switches into a fabulous rendition of the Turkish national anthem. The guides stop, the wharf workers and security guards stare open-mouthed, the police and soldiers snap to attention. At the end, the Turks, the Australians and New Zealanders all together – 100 years on to the day since the beginning of the devastating battle that killed over 100,000 of our citizens – cheer and clap wildly.

Peace between our fine nations. It looks like this.

smh.com.au, May 3, 2015

Here is a footage from the occasion

May 7, 2015
Turkey rejects more for Gallipoli 100th
- BRENDAN NICHOLSON
- From: The Australian
- October 23, 2013 12:00AM
TURKEY has rejected an Australian request to increase the number of Australians and New Zealanders visiting Gallipoli for the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landings.

The Turks insist that for safety reasons no more than 10,500 Australians and New Zealanders may attend the commemoration on April 25, 2015. And the Abbott government will press on with the plan for a national ballot to allocate those places to those who want to attend.

When the ballot plan was announced by the Labor government last year, battlefield tour operators and some of those who had booked places reacted angrily to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ plan to limit the number able to attend the dawn service. The Coalition undertook to review the planning for the centenary if it won government.

The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Michael Ronaldson, said he had discussed the numbers with the Turkish government. “It’s been made very clear to me . . . that they view 10,500 as the maximum figure. They are our hosts. They are very generous hosts and if that’s the figure they believe is appropriate then that’s the figure we will work on.”

He said he would make announcements about the ballot process in the next month. The previous government’s estimates of the numbers of people eligible for the various categories in the ballot were reasonable.

But large numbers of Australians wanted to make the journey and there had to be a way to ensure that those who entered the ballot actually intended to go, Senator Ronaldson said.

“It’s important that people have thought long and hard about whether they want to go, whether they can go and whether they will go,” he said.

To take some of the pressure off the anniversary of the Anzac landing, Senator Ronaldson is considering a proposal for commemoration ceremonies marking other key dates.

“I’m looking at how we might be able to have some smaller, but no less important for the families involved, commemorative activities through the campaign.”

In April, former defence force chief Angus Houston told The Australian that being at Gallipoli in August for the anniversaries of the battles such as Lone Pine and The Nek or the evacuation would give visitors the space to contemplate the Anzac sacrifice without battling the crowds expected to mark the 100th anniversary of the landing.

Mr Houston, who headed the inquiry into how the Gallipoli centenary should be commemorated, said it could be dangerous to allow unlimited numbers to visit. “I think if you just have a free-for-all, it will be a shambles. The simple fact is that the site will not take more than 10,500 people,” he said.

He said it might be possible to have a small team including a chaplain and a bugler at Gallipoli to carry out services daily during the anniversary period.

Senator Ronaldson said a key priority for him as minister would be caring for those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and other conflicts.

He said he wanted the next generation of Australians to come out of the Anzac commemorative period with a clear understanding of a century of sacrifice, from World War I to Afghanistan, knowing where their forebears fought, when they fought and the values they were fighting to defend, as well as what 102,000 names on the Australian War Memorial meant.

via Turkey rejects more for Gallipoli 100th | The Australian.
- BRENDAN NICHOLSON
- From: The Australian
- October 23, 2013 12:00AM
– See more at:
October 23, 2013
Overcoming Conflict: How The Battle Of Gallipoli Sparked A New Friendship

Overcoming Conflict:
How The Battle Of Gallipoli Sparked A New Friendship

The following op-ed by Sevin Elekdag, TCA Research Fellow and Onur Isci, Lecturer at the Department of History at Georgetown University was published in the Eurasia Review on April 25.Every year on April 25, Turks join with Australian and New Zealand friends to commemorate ANZAC Day. On this day 98 years ago, with the Allies at their side, the newly formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACS) landed on the Gallipoli peninsula to invade the Ottoman Empire’s capitol, modern-day Istanbul, and take control of a precious WWI supply route to Russia. As support for the war waned, the British came to Australia with a propaganda machine aimed at encouraging young Australian men to sign-up to fight in this war on a foreign land half a world away. Over the next nine months, the Turks fought a bloody battle against the ANZACs, and while the Ottoman army ultimately prevailed, both sides suffered great hardships and heavy casualties.

For the ANZACS, this little known WWI event is recognized as their first ever major offensive and has become a defining moment in shaping the national identities of the Australian and New Zealand people. For Turks, it gave inspiration and a leader (Mustafa Kemal) to the Turkish National Resistance Movement that eventually freed Anatolia from foreign invaders.

In 1934, when memories of the battle were still fresh, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, commander at Gallipoli and founder of modern Turkey, stated:

“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 now 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.”

These words mark the beginning of years of cultural exchange and efforts to establish official diplomatic relations between these nations. At the time, it may have seemed impossible to bridge the obvious differences in how the event was, and is, perceived in each country. But with perseverance, what ultimately emerged from the wreckage was a new friendship between Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. Out of respect and understanding, these nations now come together to reflect on the tragic realities of war.

So it is that Gallipoli has become a national symbol of reconciliation. How inspiring to see Turks, Australians and New Zealanders set aside animosity and empathize with the experiences and suffering of the other. Coming together over this shared experience has allowed nations once at war to build friendship and solidarity from its ashes.

Following last year’s anniversary, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Australian counterpart, Julia Gillard, met in Ankara, Turkey to plan a special remembrance of the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign. The two leaders announced that 2015 would be proclaimed the Year of Turkey in Australia and the Year of Australia in Turkey.

Every day, news from the Middle East is dire. As governments change and conflicts rage on, one worries about the next generation of leaders for Palestine, Syria, Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan. Are they being given examples showing that after the hostilities, there is the possibility for finding common ground? That dialogue and reconciliation are important steps towards a more prosperous and stable future for their children, and every generation thereafter? Is history passed down in a way that considers the perspectives of other cultures?

As war and threats of conflict swirl across the continents, it is never too soon to use the lessons of Gallipoli to teach our children not just to honor bravery and sacrifice, but also to recognize that it takes equal measures of great strength and empathy to set aside the tragedies of war.

April 25, 2013
Ottoman army enjoyed fresh food on front line

Bridie Smith

The Sphinx at Gallipoli . . . the second fieldwork survey yielded new findings about life during the campaign. Photo: Alexander Turnbull Library, New

A SIMPLE Ottoman kitchen – complete with brick oven – discovered as part of a five-year survey of Gallipoli has highlighted the two extremes of life on the 1915 battlefield.

While the Diggers were eating bully beef and other canned and processed food, their Turkish opponents ate fresh produce prepared in a terraced kitchen.

The field kitchen was built much closer to the front line than the Allied food area, which was littered with tins and jam jars.

Located during the second phase of a combined Australian, New Zealand and Turkish project to survey the battlefield before the 2015 centenary, the Ottoman kitchen was among the most revealing discoveries made last month, according to the survey archaeologist Tony Sagona from Melbourne University.

”One of the things that struck me … was that all the metal food containers that we found came from the Anzac side of the battlefield … The Ottoman army was largely cooking their food brought in from the villages.”

The Allies had field kitchens with camp fires and their diet differed dramatically. Turkish archives suggest soup was a feature on the Ottoman menu.

On the northern front line areas of the battlefield, archaeologists and historians found one of Gallipoli’s most significant sites on the peninsula’s scrubby vegetation – Malone’s Terraces at Quinn’s Post, considered a critical part of the Allied line.

The historian Richard Reid said the Ottoman army and the Anzacs would have been no more than 10 metres apart. ”If either side had broken through, that would have been the end of the campaign,” he said.

The Allied terrace was named after Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, of New Zealand’s Wellington Battalion, who organised the building of the terraces for troops to sleep in. This dramatically improved conditions when the Kiwis took over from the Australians in June 1915.

Malone’s Terrace was one of over 30 dugouts, terraced areas and tunnel entrances surveyed last month. More than 1700 metres of trench were also traced, in addition to the 4000 metres of trench mapped last year.

Among more than 130 artefacts retrieved were buttons, belt buckles, bullet shells, shards from medicine jars and three bullet-holed water bottles.

via Ottoman army enjoyed fresh food on front line.

October 18, 2011
An Anzac match in Istanbul? Really?

Playing the 2015 Australia vs New Zealand Anzac rugby league test match in Turkey is a ridiculous idea for many reasons, says Lynn McConnell, senior editor of Sportal.co.nz.

An Anzac rugby league Test in Turkey to celebrate 100 years since the horrific calamity foisted upon Australia and New Zealand by the British High Command at Gallipoli?

Sorry, it doesn’t wash. Why not play the match on the war graves of those who died in the shambles while they’re at it?

If New Zealand and Australian rugby league authorities were consistent in their thinking on playing a Test in Turkey in 2015 to commemorate the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, they would acknowledge (as surveys have found) that many Australians don’t even realise the NZ in Anzac stands for New Zealand.

They could also have played this annual match in New Zealand more often to acknowledge the contribution Kiwis made in the campaign.

They might also more correctly relate it to the actual Anzac Day and play it on the day on which the Turkish campaign is commemorated. Note, that was “commemorated” and not celebrated.

Apart from anything else, the prospect of the match further implicates the league authorities in utilising the Anzac name for potentially commercial gain. It is still illegal in both countries for the name Anzac to be used in company names.

The tragedy of it is that instead of acknowledging what this day is all about, the league authorities are in danger of making the day itself a sideshow to the match.

No doubt they are banking on those who attend the dawn service making it back to Istanbul in time for the game. That in itself is no guarantee given some of the reported traffic problems involved in clearing the peninsula.

But clearly the marketing people have realised the likely financial shortfall in staging such a match is at least a sign that their interests are correctly placed and not being seen as a “commercial” opportunity.

One report had the respective rugby leagues of both countries and the NRL working in secret because they didn’t want to alert the Australian Rugby Union.

Given that the SANZAR nations will be involved in their Super Rugby competition at that time next year, you would have to wonder what all the secrecy was about.

League authorities are unabashed in their claims of a special connection with the Anzac legend with ARL boss Geoff Carr claiming some sort of league ownership of wartime commitment.

“With 100 years since Gallipoli coming up, to have the opportunity to celebrate it with a game that is 100 years old itself, when so many rugby league players fought in all the wars since, it was something we just had to pursue,” he reportedly said.

Whoop de do, what about the sportsmen and women across the board who similarly fought in various conflagrations? It’s a clear case of selective amnesia if ever there was. What else might be targeted for future events?

The list is endless and runs the risk of becoming a circus. There are numerous battlefields in Europe, North Africa (ah well, with events in Libya at the moment Tobruk can’t be considered), the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan where various incidents could be related.

Sport, in George Orwell’s words, may well be “war minus the shooting”, but the fear is that the real purpose of Anzac Day may well be lost in the middle of all this.

Lynn McConnell is the senior editor at sportal.co.nz

What are your thoughts on playing the 2015 Anzac rugby league test in Istanbul? Have your say below.

via An Anzac match in Istanbul? Really? – NZ Sports blog.

May 6, 2011