Friendships forged in the fires of Gallipoli

By Ayse Humeyra Atilgan

ANKARA

“All war is a tragedy…”

So says Australia’s representative to Turkey, speaking ahead of the upcoming 100th anniversary of what Australians and New Zealanders call “Anzac Day.”

This annual event – which marks the Allies’ ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in Turkey – remembers not only the horrific losses but also marks the nation-building which changed the histories of Turks, Australians and New Zealanders alike.

On 25 April 1915, eight months into the First World War, Allied soldiers landed on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula – Gelibolu in Turkish. The troops were there as part of a plan to open the Dardanelles Strait on Turkey's Aegean coast to Allied fleets, allowing them to threaten the Ottoman capital Istanbul.

The Allied forces, however, encountered strong and courageous resistance from the Turks, and the campaign turned out to be a costly failure.

Gallipoli is a “core part” of Australia’s history and the southern hemisphere country’s very earliest international engagement, says James Larsen, Australian ambassador in Ankara.

Speaking to The Anadolu Agency, Larsen says the campaign on the peninsula was the first time Australian soldiers engaged in a battle as Australian soldiers.

The country became an independent nation in 1901, only 14 years before the Gallipoli campaign; at the time of the First World War the population was just five million.

There was a tremendous cry to encourage young men to join up and to contribute to the war effort across the country, and 400,000 Australians volunteered although there was no forced conscription.

"The Gallipoli campaign was a terrible tragedy for all participants," Larsen says, adding: "All war is a tragedy, and what we should be reflecting on today is how to focus on what we can learn to prevent conflict occurring again."

Tens of thousands of Turkish nationals and soldiers died, along with tens of thousands of Europeans, plus around 7,000-8,000 Australians and nearly 3,000 New Zealanders.

The campaign was also the first time that New Zealand soldiers had served overseas in an identifiably New Zealand capacity, the country’s ambassador to Ankara, Jonathan Andrew Curr, tells AA.

"War is never a good thing," says Curr. "It is always horrible for those involved and for those loved ones who are back home; and the Gallipoli experience helps people to reflect on that."

New Zealand, at the time, had also a very small population – about 1 million people – but they suffered a third of the Anzac fatalities with almost 7,500 others wounded.

"Not a single town or city in New Zealand was unaffected by what happened," Curr says, adding that all generations benefit from being reminded what war is really like.

A great number of Australians and New Zealanders travel to Turkey every year to see the site of the fighting. Many visitors are young Australians and New Zealanders having what they call their "OE" [overseas experience] in Europe and visiting Turkey as part of their international travel.

This year, however, on the 100th anniversary, the demographic of the visitors will change; there will not just be young backpackers but older people too who have put a lot of planning into coming.

Eight thousand Australians are expected at the official commemorations on April 25 alone. Together with an anticipated 2,000 New Zealanders, they will make a 30-hour journey to Turkey to join the thousands of others who will be visiting in and around the peninsula.

"Many Australians see it as a part of their passage to adulthood, as their adulthood experience," says Larsen. 

Larsen himself attended Anzac Day at Gallipoli last year, his first visit to the site.

"When you visit the graves of the young men who died 100 years ago and see the beautiful scenery and hear the waves lapping at the beach you really reflect on what it must have been like to be a young man who had never travelled anywhere to have landed on the beach, foreign. You would have looked immediately from the beach and there were Turkish soldiers on the cliff tops.

They must have been very daunted by that experience and yet they gathered their courage, crossed the boats and in that first day, they climbed those cliffs, uphill on the heights of the peninsula, and stuck fighting for many months."

Reflecting on the war, the ambassador says it must have been "a very demanding experience for the inexperienced young men."

Curr, who has been New Zealand ambassador to Turkey for almost eight months, first visited the peninsula in August 2014.

"I went there with a mixture of things: one was an emotional connection, as a New Zealander wanting to visit this place of pilgrimage; and secondly as someone who was going to be responsible for helping with the organization of a very big commemorative event."

Curr describes Canakkale as "sites of great peace and reflection even though they commemorate battles which were fought 100 years ago."

"You get a sense of how close they were, the opposing sides – both the Allies and the Ottoman forces – and it’s very difficult to imagine, 100 years later, how you could have been a 17, 18, 19-year-old soldier fighting for the very first time in your life and in a territory far, far away from home."

The New Zealand ambassador says the main lesson of the Gallipoli Campaign is to avoid such conflicts in the future, a point also made by Australia's representative in Turkey who says: "As a diplomat, it makes me reflect on my job, [that] we don't end up in that sort of conflict situation if you can possible avoid it."

"The interesting thing out of the Gallipoli campaign is certainly our relations with Turkey," Larsen adds.

"We started off in an environment of extreme conflict, and during that conflict there arose a sentiment of respect and even friendship between the soldiers, in an interesting variety of ways.

From that beginning, I think our two countries, even though we are geographically distant, have developed a very firm friendship."

There are 80,000 Turkish Australians who were welcomed as immigrants to Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, and settled in Melbourne and Sydney.

They are very dynamic and lively community, and an important part of Australia, the ambassador says.

He also adds that he finds the cooperation with Turkey about remembering the war dead "excellent," something which is described as "critical" by Curr.

"We wouldn't be able to hold these events in Gallipoli with so many New Zealanders, Australians and others who join us without the support and cooperation of Turkey," Curr stresses.

"I think there is something unique and something special about the friendship which developed between Turkey, Australia and New Zealand," he adds.

"This is a friendship which is not based, for example, on strong trade ties. It's not based necessarily on being part of the same security pact, that you might have today in an entity like NATO. It's not necessarily based on strong cultural people-to-people links.

There's a real emotional depth to the friendships which has arisen from Gallipoli."

Today, there stands a memorial on Anzac Parade in the Australian capital Canberra – its only memorial to an enemy commander – which honors Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, commander of Turkish forces at Gallipoli, as well as the heroism and sacrifice of the Anzac and Turkish troops who took part in the campaign.

Curr says the words Ataturk wrote in 1934 shows that cooperation with Turkey is irreplaceable.

His Australian counterpart Larsen agrees, saying that the tribute by Ataturk to the fallen soldiers was "an incredibly moving sentiment."

What it really conveyed was that modern Turkey had moved beyond the First World War and the enmity between the two sides and was looking to create new relationships and friendships that went beyond that conflict."

The tribute by Ataturk, which is read out at every Anzac service – usually by a Turkish representative – reads:

"Those heroes who 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 in this country of ours.

You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosoms and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they become our sons as well."