The Best Gallipoli Yarns and Forgotten Stories
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The Mongol Empire was torn by internal struggles and soon fell apart. As a result, the Turks’ influence in Anatolia grew. During the 1300s, a group of Turks who became known as the Ottomans began to build a mighty empire.
By the late 1300s, the Ottomans had conquered the western two-thirds of Anatolia, most of Thrace and much of the Balkan Peninsula, including Greece. In 1453, Ottoman forces led by Mehmet II captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire. The Ottomans called the city Istanbul and made it their capital. After Ottoman forces conquered Syria in 1516 and Egypt in 1517, the empire became the leading naval power in the Mediterranean region.
By 1566, under Sultan Suleyman I (known as Suleyman the Magnificent), the Ottoman Empire extended from Hungary in Europe to Yemen in the south, Morocco in the west and Persia in the east. Five years later, in 1571, a European fleet defeated the Ottoman navy in the Battle of Lepanto, near Greece. The Ottoman Empire was in steady decline from that point until 1918.
In 1774, the Ottomans lost a six-year war against Russia and were forced to allow Russian ships to pass through the Dardanelles, the waters linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. The Ottoman Empire then lost the Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea, to Russia in 1783.
The empire also lost more territory during the 1800s. The Treaty of Adrianople acknowledged the independence of Greece and gave Russia control of the mouth of the Danube River. The Ottomans then conceded other Balkan territory in a series of wars with Russia, and lost Algeria and Tunisia to France and Cyprus to Britain.
During the late 1890s, small groups of students and military officers who opposed the empire’s old, harsh policies banded together secretly. They were known as the Young Turks and the most influential group was the Committee of Union and Progress. In 1908, members of this group led a revolt against Sultan Abdulhamit and then ruled the empire using his brother, Mehmet V, as a puppet sultan.
Some Young Turks, such as Enver Pasha, wanted to restore the greatness of the Ottoman Empire. Others, like Mustafa Kemal, no longer cared about the idea of maintaining an empire and wished to establish a new Turkish nation.
And so the Ottoman Empire continued to crumble. Soon after the revolution in 1908, Bulgaria declared its independence, and Austria–Hungary annexed Bosnia–Herzegovina. Italy took Libya in 1912. In 1913, the Ottoman Empire surrendered Crete, part of Macedonia, southern Epirus, and many Aegean islands to Greece. By 1914, the empire had lost all its European territory except eastern Thrace.
Enver Pasha, leader of the governing committee, had strong links with Germany and, in 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of Germany and Austria–Hungary in an attempt to regain lost territory.
Many nationalists saw this as a bad move. Mustafa Kemal was of the opinion that it was a ‘no win’ situation for Turkey. If the Central Powers won, Turkey would be a satellite of Germany. If the Central Powers lost, Turkey lost everything.
In 1915, the British, French and Russians, with support from Greece, tried to gain control of the Straits so that aid could be shipped to Russia.
The Ottomans, with German help, defeated the British and French navies’ attempt to force a passage through the Dardanelles in March 1915 and then successfully held the Gallipoli Peninsula, dealing the Allies a crushing defeat in their attempt to invade, which lasted from April to December 1915.
The Allies, however, won the war in 1918.
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After World War I, the Allies set out to break up the Ottoman Empire. Allied troops occupied Istanbul and the Straits. In May 1919, Greek troops, protected by Allied fleets, landed at the Ottoman port of Izmir and advanced into the country. The Turks deeply resented the Ottoman government’s inability to defend their homeland.
In August 1920, the sultan’s government signed the harsh Treaty of Sevres with the Allies. The treaty granted independence to some parts of the empire and gave other parts to various Allied powers. The empire was reduced to Istanbul and a portion of Anatolia. As a result of the treaty, the sultan’s popularity among the Turks declined further, while the power of the nationalists grew.
Mustafa Kemal was a Turkish military hero as a result of his bravery and leadership during the Gallipoli campaign. He quickly organised a nationalist movement. Under his leadership, a series of nationalist congresses met in Anatolian cities and formed a provisional government. In April 1920, a new Turkish Grand National Assembly met in Ankara and elected Kemal as its president.
In September 1922, the nationalist forces finally drove the Greeks from Turkey. The Allies agreed to draw up a new peace treaty with the nationalists. The Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, set Turkey’s borders about where they are today.
The Grand National Assembly proclaimed Turkey to be a republic on 29 October 1923 and elected Kemal as president. Kemal and other nationalist leaders believed that the new nation could not survive without sweeping social changes.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the government did away with traditions such as Muslim schools, the Islamic legal system, and the wearing of the veil by women and the fez by men. It abolished the religious and civil office of the caliph. Polygamy was outlawed and women received the right to vote and to hold public office.
One of the reforms to Europeanise Turkey was that all Turks were required to choose a family name. At the same time, the Grand National Assembly gave Kemal his surname, Ataturk, meaning ‘Father of the Turks’.
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Mustafa Kemal was born on 12 March 1881, in Thessaloniki, Greece (then part of the Ottoman Empire). He attended military schools and rose to the rank of general during World War I. He became famous for his role in defeating the Allies at Gallipoli Peninsula.
Kemal had originally been active as a young Turk but he disagreed with Enver and others on such issues as maintaining the empire and, later, joining the Germans in the war against Britain, France and Russia. As a result he was never part of the ruling group and was sent as military attaché to Bulgaria in a form of exile.
It is ironic that the man who defeated us at Gallipoli was opposed to being involved in the war on the side of the Central Powers.
It can be argued that Kemal was the one man who stood between Allied victory and defeat at Gallipoli. It was he who anticipated the Allied moves and read the situation and reacted fastest on 25 April. It was he who ordered the 57th Regiment (significantly an all-Turkish regiment of the Ottoman army) to die in order to halt the Anzac advance. It was he who drove the New Zealanders and British from Chunuk Bair on 10 August and thus finally rendered the Allied August offensive futile.
Victory at Gallipoli was what gave Ataturk the kudos, credibility, popularity and power base to later lead the Turks to independence and create the nation we know today as Turkey. There is a certain irony in the fact that Kemal’s own birthplace, Salonika, in Macedonia, part of the old Ottoman Empire, was not included in the Turkey he helped create; it is now part of Greece.
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Ataturk served as Turkey’s president until he died in 1938. His memory is still revered today and his photograph hangs in all public buildings.
Upon the death of Ataturk, Ismet Inonu became president and kept Turkey virtually neutral during World War II by avoiding entering the conflict until February 1945.
Turkey struggled to come to terms with its new identity as a democratic republic through the twentieth century. By the late 1950s, a rise in the national debt and restrictions on freedom of speech made the ruling Democrat Party unpopular and, in 1960, army units seized control of the government. Prime Minister Menderes was hanged for crimes against the nation and President Bayar was sentenced to life imprisonment but later released.
In 1961, Turkey adopted a new constitution and the provisional government then held open national elections. No party won a majority in the legislature. In the late 1960s, radical groups of Turks began staging bombings, kidnappings and murders in an attempt to overthrow the government.
In the 1970s, deep divisions developed between s
ecular and religious groups. No political party could form a stable government. In 1980, the military again seized control of the government and remained in power until Turkey returned to civilian rule in 1983.
The Motherland Party controlled the government from 1983 until the True Path Party won the most legislative seats in the 1991 elections and Tansu Ciller became Turkey’s first female prime minister.
In the elections held in 1995, the Welfare Party, a strongly pro-Islamic party, won the most seats in the legislature but, in 1998, the Constitutional Court banned the Welfare Party, ruling that its goal of creating an Islamic state was unconstitutional.
This type of instability has been the norm in Turkey over the past seventy years, with political parties forming, merging and re-forming constantly.
Turkey has also been beset by other problems. Since the 1960s there has been unrest in Cyprus, which remains politically divided. The government has battled Kurdish guerrillas in southeastern Turkey and, since the 1980s, 30,000 people have died in the fighting. In August 1999, a powerful earthquake struck north-western Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people. Then, in 2001, the national currency lost about half its value, thousands of businesses closed, and hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs.
The European Union accepted Turkey as a candidate for membership in 1999, but political and economic reforms are required before the EU will set a timetable for membership. In 2002 Turkey abolished the use of capital punishment during peacetime and expanded civil rights.
Turkey is a nation torn between old traditional values and the modern world. It is both European and Middle Eastern, sectarian and Muslim. The long process of evolution into a successful and independent nation, begun by Kemal Ataturk, is not yet complete, but Turkey is a proud country with a unique heritage and at least her future is now in her own hands.
SOME NOTES ON AUTHORS
The writers represented in this collection are a very disparate and interesting bunch. Some were professional writers and journalists, others were soldiers of various ranks, from privates right up to high-ranking officers such as General Birdwood and Colonel Joseph Beeston. Many had fascinating lives, tragic or intriguing, sometimes both.
There are also stories that rely on diaries kept at the time and written up into fuller accounts at a later date. Writers such as Oliver Hogue, Hector Dinning, Joseph Beeston, General Birdwood, Hector Cavill and Eric Hanman fit into this category. All these men served at Gallipoli and wrote accounts of their experiences. Some of these accounts are quite prosaic and record everyday life in detail, others are far more reflective and literary.
The authors who didn’t serve at Anzac, or in the war at all, tended to write more fictionalised accounts for obvious reasons. The most famous of these is Arthur Hoey Davis (‘Steele Rudd’). There are those like E.C. Buley, whose writing was intended as a sort of ‘Boy’s Own Adventure’ chronicle of the war based on first- and second-hand accounts. Buley, a writer of travel and adventure articles, wrote relatively accurate, although rather jingoistic, accounts of the campaign for both adults and children.
The verse used in this collection comes from a varied and interesting bunch of poets and versifiers. About many of these poets I know virtually nothing—except that they were at Gallipoli—as many have remained anonymous. Others wrote for the little magazines published behind the lines by the troops, or submitted their verse for The Anzac Book only to find there was no room for it and it was not used.
There are also verses here from well-respected poets of the day such as Banjo Paterson, Will Ogilvie, ‘John O’Brien’ (Father Patrick Hartigan), Edward Dyson, Roderic Quinn, and Henry Lawson and his friend ‘Jim Grahame’ (J.W. Gordon). These reflect the feeling of the time—the enormous pride and patriotism and sense of tragedy and loss inspired in the general public by the Anzac landing and the tragic campaign.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Askin, M. Gallipoli: A Turning Point, Mustafa Askin, Canakkale, Turkey, 2002.
Baylebridge, W. An Anzac Muster, Angus & Robertson, 1962 (first published in 1921).
Bean, C.E.W. (ed.) The Anzac Book, Cassell, London, 1916.
Bean, C.E.W. The Story of Anzac, Vol II, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1935.
Beeston, J.L. Five Months at Anzac, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1916.
Birdwood, W. Khaki and Gown: An Autobiography, Ward Lock, London, 1941.
Bridges, R. The Immortal Dawn, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1917.
Buley, E.C. Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War, Andrew Melrose, London, 1915.
Carlyon, L. Gallipoli, Pan MacMillan, Sydney, 2001.
Cavill, H.W. Imperishable Anzacs: A Story of Australia’s Famous First Brigade from the Diary of Pte. Harold Walter Cavill No. 27 1 Bn., William Brooks & Co, Sydney, 1916.
Coulthard-Clark, C. The Encyclopedia of Australian Battles, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998.
Dinning, H. By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal, Constable, London, 1918.
Fahey, W. Diggers’ Songs, AMHP, Sydney, 1966.
Fewster, K., Basarm, V. and Vasarm, H. Gallipoli: The Turkish Story, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985/2003.
Hanman, E.F. Twelve Months with the ‘Anzacs’, Watson, Ferguson & Co., Brisbane, 1916.
Hogue, O. Love Letters of an Anzac, Melrose, London, 1916.
——Trooper Bluegum at the Dardanelles, Melrose, London, 1916.
Kent, D. From Trench and Troopship, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1999.
Kent, D. (ed.) Kia Ora Coo-ee: The Magazine for the ANZACS in the Middle East, 1918, Cornstalk/Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1981.
Kinross, P. Ataturk: The Rebirth of a Nation, Weidenfeld/Phoenix, London, 1991/1993.
Livesey, A. Great Battles of World War I, Guild, London, 1989.
Loch, F.S. The Straits Impregnable, John Murray, London, 1917.
Perry, R. Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War, Random House, Sydney, 2004.
Phillips, W. Australians in World War One: Gallipoli, Phillips, Coffs Harbour, 2001.
Pope, E. and Wheal, E. Dictionary of the First World War, MacMillan, London, 1995.
Pugsley, C. The Anzacs at Gallipoli, Lothian, Melbourne, 2000.
Rudd, S. Memoirs of Corporal Keeley, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1971 (first published in 1918).
Skeyhill, T. A Singing Soldier, Knickerbocker Press, New York, 1919.
——Soldier Songs from Anzac, George Robertson & Co., Melbourne, 1915.
Steel, N. and Hart, P. Defeat at Gallipoli, MacMillan, London, 1994.
Travers, T. Gallipoli 1915, Tempus Publishing, Stroud, UK, 2001/2004.
Uluarslan, H. Gallipoli Campaign, Zeki & Uluarslan, Canakkale, Turkey, 2001.
Various, An Anzac Memorial, Returned Sailors and Soldiers League, Sydney, 1919.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THANKS TO:
The Australian War Memorial
The Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
The Turkish Embassy, Canberra
The late Alan Murphy
Rebecca Kaiser
Michelle Swainson
Susin Chow
Jo Lyons
Julia Eim
Stuart Neal
Robyn McMillan
Turkey
Ali Salih Dirik
Our driver, Mehemet
NUR Travel Istanbul