Its brutal, often hand-to-hand clashes are almost unrecognisable in today's remote-controlled modern warfare, and its losses were significant: 8709 Australians died in the failed push to control the strategic Turkish seaways, along with 2707 New Zealanders, about 21,000 British, about 9800 French and 1358 Indians.
In the lead-up to the 2015 centenary of the seven-month long campaign, Turkish and Australian academics are also sifting through thousands of pages of Turkish military documents.
Turkish troops on parade at Gallipoli during World War I, circa 1915. Photo: Getty Images
Like the diaries, the documents are written in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic script - Turkey adopted Roman script in 1928 - so must be painstakingly translated to supplement the historical and archaeological work that it is hoped will put together the few missing pieces of the Gallipoli story.
Associate Professor Muhammet Erat from the Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University near Gallipoli says the military records and documents lack the human side of the war: ''what they felt, how they suffered, what they ate, what they didn't eat, these personal details are lacking in the historical documents,'' he says.
''We want to uncover those truths and share them with people.''
But amid this renewed search for answers, a parallel retelling of the Turkish myths of Gallipoli is occurring across this moderate Islamic country.
At its heart is a reassessment of the role of Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk, the Turkish commander at Gallipoli, founder of the modern,
secular Turkish republic and its first president, says the director of
the Gallipoli Centenary Research Project at Macquarie University, Harvey
Broadbent.''There definitely seems to be a move in certain political circles to reduce the role of Ataturk and increase the motivation of Turks at Gallipoli … to be fired by their belief in Islam, to say they looked on it as a kind of holy war,'' Broadbent says.
''This … aligns itself with the rolling back of Ataturk's secular ideas to reduce the restrictions that he placed on religion in the state.''
Since the moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 many secular Turks fear the Ataturk myth is being quietly dismantled.
And with it his role in the Gallipoli campaign is being retold, Broadbent says.
Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, circa 1922. Photo: Getty Images
''Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and … his superior officer both had a strong, purely military approach to the war, rather than any extremist or pious religious attitude to motivating the troops,'' he says. ''Ataturk always called on his troops to fight for the motherland rather than fighting for Allah.''
But recent growth in Turkish battlefield tourism has occurred hand-in-hand with the significant Turkish military memorials developing into ''more sacred Islamic spaces'', he says.
At the heart of the resentment many Islamists feel towards Ataturk is his decision in 1924, soon after he came to power, to abolish the caliphate and lay the foundations for a more secular society.
The issue of secularism versus religion is a deeply sensitive one in Turkey, says Muhammet Erat.
An academic who has spent his career studying the battles on the Gallipoli peninsula, Erat acknowledges ''there may be people who try to diminish Ataturk's success … but these opinions cannot ever change what he has achieved''.
''Without Ataturk the narrative of 1915 would be incomplete, but by only telling it from the perspective of Ataturk would also be incomplete.''
He notes that the majority of Turkey's population during World War I was Muslim and that the Sultan Mehmet V, also the Caliph, declared a jihad or holy war in 1914, calling on all Muslims to help the Ottoman Empire in its battle against the Allied Forces. Few heeded the Caliph's call.
His colleague Assistant Professor Azer Banu Kemaloglu, who is also working on the Gallipoli centenary research project, says in the past five years there has been a noticeable campaign to ''attempt to debunk Ataturk's myth'', prompting significant debate across Turkey.
''They say he was an insignificant actor in the Gallipoli campaign,'' she says.
''Because Ataturk represents the last remnants of the secular nationhood and they want to move towards an Islamic government, they have to kill this idea, this myth of Ataturk.''
Yet it is a difficult myth to kill. Described by historians as having a ''superb grasp of strategy'' Ataturk and his leadership was seen as decisive in defeating the Allies' plans, ultimately forcing the withdrawal of Allied troops, including Australians, in December 1915.
As well as examining the diaries provided by veterans' family members, Erat's team will be travelling through the countryside around Canakkale, where much of the Turkish military contingent was drawn, collecting oral histories from families.
It is the stories from the mouths of soldiers that keep the experience of Gallipoli alive, he says.
''When they were in the trenches in 1915 and they wanted to see if the other side was sleeping, they would put a cap on their rifle and raise it up - if the Australians were awake they would shoot at it, if they were asleep they would not,'' Erat says.
''These things do not occur in modern warfare; the humour, the humanity, that is missing. In modern warfare there is not even the need for trenches.''
The Gallipoli project led by Harvey Broadbent at Macquarie University is similarly ambitious, combing the Turkish military archives in Ankara and the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul to comprehensively piece together the Turkish side of the campaign.
''We know substantially the Australian British and French story - there are over 130 publications in English relating to the Gallipoli campaign throughout the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century,'' Broadbent says.
''What is not well covered in English is the Turkish side of the story.
''It is going to provide … sections of the story of Gallipoli that have been missing, including answers to questions such as why the August offensive failed and how near it came to success.''
In 1934, Ataturk wrote a moving tribute to Anzacs who died at Gallipoli, reaching out to his former enemies in a way Kemaloglu says was much better received in Australia than in Turkey.
''Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country,'' Ataturk wrote.
''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.''
And it is here, on this remote peninsula on Turkey's Aegean coastline, that so many young Australians lie, the neatly arranged rows of gravestones punctuated with bright yellow, pink and purple flowers a poignant reminder of that brutal campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment