The ANZACs and the Çanakkale Gazileri
Australian and Turkish viewpoints on the Gallipoli campaign; illustrated, as always, using examples from TV and movies
*Some spoilers for various historical events portrayed in TV shows, particularly S01E01 of Channel Nine’s Gallipoli (2015) series*
Much of the memorable TV from my childhood was imported: shows from the BBC (Doctor Who, The Goodies, Blake’s 7), American redubs of Japanese anime (Star Blazers, Battle of the Planets), and that one school holidays where the TV was showing a different classic sci-fi movie every day.
However, there was this time in the early 80’s that was like a golden age of Australian-made TV miniseries that all starred Sigrid Thornton, fresh from her international success in the film The Man from Snowy River (1982). I can still hum the main theme to All the Rivers Run (1983) because my piano teacher at the time taught me how to play it, but the series I remember most clearly is the ABC’s 1915 (1982) which follows two brothers into the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War.
I think 1915 would have been my first exposure to the horrors of war on TV, as I don’t think I saw the movie Gallipoli (1981) starring Mel Gibson until much later. 1915 was certainly more memorable than Channel Nine’s ANZACS (1985), which was another retelling of the same legend a few years later.
In time for this year’s Anzac Day I watched Channel Nine’s Gallipoli (2015) miniseries, and it was surprisingly good. Like most people I avoided this one back in the day; despite being marketed as a “landmark television event” the series sank like a stone on launch. Probably the result of ANZAC overload, as the series was released to coincide with the overly hyped commemorations of the 100-year anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
As my Australian readers will know, and my non-Australian readers will have guessed from the above, the ANZAC legend and the story of our defeat by the Turks at Gallipoli is quite a big deal, both in Australia and New Zealand. Anzac Day, commemorating the land invasion of the Turkish “Gelibolu” peninsula by ANZAC soldiers on 25 April 1915, is a full public holiday with dawn vigils and marches; it is one of only four days where most shops in AU have restricted trading hours.1 By contrast, Remembrance Day which marks the official end of the First World War on 11 Nov 1918, is usually commemorated with just a minute of silence at 11 am.
If you ask Aussies why Anzac Day is such a big deal, we may not have a good answer for you. It is not obvious why we should want to remember such a resounding defeat of our forces, including some truly horrific battles where many died and nothing was accomplished. At the same time, the losses at Gallipoli (26,111 Australian casualties, including 8,141 deaths) were only a fraction of those in the “real war” on the Western Front, where 46,000 Australians died.
The reason why such a relatively minor part of the Great War was regarded with such significance probably has to do with the fact that Australia as a nation had only existed for the 14 years since Federation of the states on 1st Jan 1901. The new nation, still a loyal part of the British Empire, wished to claim its place in the world as a united country; Gallipoli was its first big public test. Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson summed this up in these lines from his poem We’re all Australians Now, written in 1915:
The mettle that a race can show
Is proved with shot and steel,
And now we know what nations know
And feel what nations feel.The honoured graves beneath the crest
Of Gaba Tepe hill
May hold our bravest and our best,
But we have brave men still.With all our petty quarrels done,
Dissensions overthrown,
We have, through what you boys have done,
A history of our own.
The tag line of the 1915 TV series is “Another war. Another time. Nothing changes.” In fact, while the events of Gallipoli are past and set in stone, the perception and interpretation of that history in Australian society has constantly evolved over a hundred years. Especially after the death of the last surviving Gallipoli veterans,2 there’s now little hope of resolving the conflicting eyewitness reports of what really happened there. “As remembrance replaces memory, and nationalism replaces remembrance”,3 the arguing over symbols and significance continues. Dr Martin Ball wrote in The Age in 2004:
The Anzac tradition holds many values for us all to celebrate, but the myth also suppresses parts of Australian history that are difficult to deal with. Anzac is a means of forgetting the origins of Australia. The Aboriginal population is conveniently absent. The convict stain is wiped clean. Postwar immigration is yet to broaden the cultural identity of the population.
As Australia broadened its horizons some non-white and/or non-Australian viewpoints4 began to be included in the Anzac legend. This soon led to a shift that was pro-Turkish and anti-British; the allies we rushed to support at the start of the war began to be blamed for the disaster that unfolded. In Gallipoli (2015) British commanders Ian Hamilton (played by John Bach), and Alexander Godley (played by John Fillingham) are portrayed as particularly incompetent and/or uncaring; probably correctly. However, the anti-British backlash may be subsiding a little; see for example the comments here by Dayton McCarthy (historical and military advisor to the mini-series):
As anyone who knows me can attest, I have never been a ‘Brit-basher’- in fact the opposite. I hope as the series unfolds a real empathy for Hamilton will be revealed but everyone will read into it what they want.5 Viewers will see British officers such Hooky Walker and Birdie in a very good light.
Instead, there is now some acknowledgement that the Australians were imperfect. It was a bold move in 2015 to portray the ANZAC heroes bayoneting enemy soldiers who were trying to surrender - the Brereton Inquiry into Australian war crimes in Afghanistan did not begin until 2016, and its sickening conclusions were not published until 2020, so the Australian public was not so familiar with the idea that their own soldiers were capable of such things.
“I will take an honorable enemy over a dishonorable friend every time”
-Baine Bloodhoof, World of Warcraft
The pro-Turkish viewpoint has only gotten stronger with time. Already well known by the time of the 1915 TV series in 1982 was the idea that the ANZACs had developed a deep respect for the bravery and honour of the enemy soldiers. The famous armistice where troops from both sides cooperated to bury their dead, shaking hands and sharing cigarettes as they did so, was depicted in that earlier TV series (video link). While there is no Turkish spoken during that clip, the 2015 version of that scene depicts much more interaction between the two sides, including some Turkish-speaking actors (Youtube link).
The best indication that significant Turkish input went into Gallipoli (2015) comes through this next scene featuring none other than Mustafa Kemal himself, the future founding father of the Turkish republic. Not yet known as Atatürk, at this stage of his career he was Commander of the 19th Division, which bore the brunt of the initial ANZAC attack. With little ammunition remaining, Kemal gave his famous speech to his surviving soldiers, who successfully held off the ANZACs until reinforcements arrived. This scene is one of the most powerful of the series; you see the precise moment where the chaotic ANZAC advance is halted (symbolised by the death of the competent Australian officer who is Kemal’s counterpart). From that moment on, the Gallipoli campaign is a stalemate, until the eventual Australian retreat. Video here (if you don’t want to watch any shooting, the speech itself starts at 4:00; but the whole clip is worth watching):
I love lots of things about that clip. Whoever did the Turkish subtitles has a good grasp of Australian English. It amused me at 1:37 when it took five syllables (“Anlayamadım?”, or “I was unable to understand?”) to translate the Lieutenant’s barely-one-syllable “…Sir?”. Bonus Turkish-viewpoint marks for the dying soldier at 3:26 who is reciting the Kelime-i şehadet or Islamic creed (it begins with “Eşhedü en la…”), and the ones shouting “Allah-Allah-Allah” as they charge.
To my knowledge, I’d never seen Kemal’s “I’m commanding you to die” speech portrayed on Australian TV before this show. The thing is, Mustafa Kemal has long been a hero of the Gallipoli campaign to the Australians; it just took popular culture a while to catch up. The proof is at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
In front of the Australian War Memorial is Anzac Parade, lined on both sides with various monuments to fallen allies in different conflicts. But in pride of place, right opposite the main complex, is the Kemal Atatürk Memorial; it remains the only monument on Anzac Parade to an enemy commander.
But enough of Australian TV ANZACs; I want to see it in Turkish. I want to know who their legendary heroes are, the equivalent of our Simpson and his donkey, Archie Barwick, or Billy Sing the sniper. Who do the Turks blame for the mess at Gallipoli (apart from the obvious fact that we invaded)?
The first thing I found out was that the Turkish day of commemoration is earlier in the year than Anzac Day - “Çanakkale Şehitlerini Anma Günü”, or Çanakkale Victory and Martyrs Day, is commemorated on March 18th. While the land invasion at Gallipoli was the first big test for Australia as a nation, for the Turks it lacks this context and remains a horrible costly afterthought. Instead, the naval battles that preceded the land campaign are where the Ottoman Empire came very close to losing the war. The British fleet had powerful guns that could out-range the defenses along the Çanakkale Straight,6 and so their plan was to sit at a comfortable distance in their invincible warships and destroy these forts, then sail straight to Istanbul and perhaps force an Ottoman surrender, while opening supply lines to Russia via the Black Sea. It was only when this turned out to be more difficult than first imagined that the disastrous land invasion began.
I couldn’t find a comparable Turkish Gallipoli miniseries to watch, but there are a number of relevant movies. I chose Çanakkale 1915 (2012) based on the reviews at Wikipedia; firstly it was apparently the most successful of several similar films, and secondly (and more importantly) the reviewer at Today’s Zaman found that some scenes "are so blatantly full of improbable valor that they border on the comical”, which sounds like exactly my thing. Indeed, that’s exactly what we get. There are various copies floating around on Youtube, but I watched the following version since it had good English subtitles (and only occasional overdubbed music to defeat the copyright detector):
The first legendary Turkish hero is a guy called Seyit Ali Çabuk, or Seyit Onbaşı.7 His story begins around 30 minutes into the movie (or use this Youtube link for a shorter clip without subtitles). Here the garrison of the Rumeli Mecidiye Bastion are huddled underground, sheltering from the naval bombardment of their position.
In the Wikipedia version of the story, Seyit and another soldier named Ali were the only survivors of the bombardment, and they emerged to find that although the enemy ships were now in range of their guns, only a single cannon remained undamaged. With all the ammunition hoists destroyed, Seyit carried the shells to the cannon himself, each shell weighing 215 kg.8 On his third shot, he hit the British battleship HMS Ocean, causing it to retreat into a Turkish minefield where it was sunk.
In the movie version of the story most of the garrison survives the bombardment, so we get to see a lot of men standing around doing nothing while Seyit (played by Ufuk Bayraktar) lifts heavy shells all by himself. C’mon guys, surely you can carry one between you? The man is struggling, look how much his nose is bleeding! They do shout encouraging things at him, which must have helped; apparently in real life, after the adrenaline of battle and the threat of imminent defeat had passed, Seyit was unable to repeat the feat again. The picture they took later therefore shows Seyit carrying a wooden replica shell:
The next legendary heroes of Çanakkale are the partners of Seyit in the sinking of the HMS Ocean, namely the crew of the minelayer Nusrat. The Ottomans had laid minefields all through the narrowest parts of the Çanakkale Straight, and the British minesweepers had been trying unsuccessfully to destroy them. However, the Ottomans were carefully watching the warships as they manoeuvred up and down the Straight, and they noticed that the movements were predictable; the ships were limited to turning around in places that were out of range of the remaining Ottoman guns. In particular, they identified one place where the warships always turned to starboard as they returned, passing through an area near the Karanlık Liman in Erenköy Bay. Anticipating the big Allied naval offensive on March 18th, the crew of the Nusrat managed to sneak under cover of darkness, evading enemy searchlights, and lay out their last 26 mines in the perfect location along the bay.
The movie version of this story starts around 19 minutes in, but the explosions appear at the end of Seyit’s scene above. The mines were laid in such shallow water that they should have been visible to reconnaissance planes, but according to the movie the cliffs are so high at that location that the water stays in darkness for much of the morning, making the mines more difficult to spot. (This makes sense given the name “Karanlık Liman” which means “Darkness Harbour”)
In any case, the mines were superbly effective. As well as HMS Ocean mentioned above, the British battleship HMS Irresistible and the French warship Bouvet were sunk with the help of Nusret’s mines; and the British battlecruiser HMS Inflexible was badly damaged. With another two ships damaged by cannonfire the Allied fleet was suddenly reduced by six, and the British accepted defeat; deciding to abandon the naval campaign in favour of the Gallipoli land invasion. This defeat is the one the Turks celebrate on March 18th each year.
The rest of the movie continues with the Gallipoli land invasion. A few quick highlights:
-The Çanakkale 1915 version of the “I’m ordering you to die” speech is at 1:14:35. Quite different to the version on Australian TV!
-The dialogue of the British commanders during the movie is actually spoken in English. Although the accents sound more American than British, what I find seriously amusing is the amazing Oscar-worthy delivery from this character who I think is meant to be British General Ian Hamilton (from 1:29:00):
(“…Damn!”)
-The song played before the final charge (female a capella singing) is the Alay Marşı, the official song of the Turkish Special Forces.
There is one thing I want to discuss in more detail, which is the question of blame. The Ottoman commanders defending the Gallipoli peninsula were experienced, having just come out of the Balkan Wars, whereas the ANZACs had never been to war before. The Turks had a good four weeks to prepare once they realised an invasion was imminent; the British commanders were overconfident and underprepared, and the ANZACs were confused when they were landed on the wrong beach. The Turks should have thrown them back into the sea immediately; what went wrong that the ANZACs were able to gain a foothold on Turkish soil, and hold it for eight months? According to the movie the blame rests with this guy, Otto Liman von Sanders:
Liman von Sanders was brought in from Germany in 1913 to modernise the Ottoman army, and he was its Commander in Chief at the outbreak of the war. We see him introduced in the Çanakkale 1915 movie at 42:53, and the Turks don’t think much of him. He is depicted as inexperienced (he had never actually been to war before) yet so sure of himself that he would not accept input from his junior officers. Here he is (at 44:37) criticising the Ottoman plan for the defence of Gallipoli (spoken in German by actor Reinhard Zich):
(I’ve embedded the audio since its such a good illustration of the headstart that English speakers get when learning German. Most of my German comes from listening to the metal band Rammstein, but I can still understand those first lines of his: “Wir brauchen einen neuen Plan. Dieser Plan ist falsch!” (“We need a new plan. This plan is faulty!”))
Unsure of where the British-allied attackers would land, Liman pulled back most of the defenders to a central location, from which he planned to quickly respond when the attack began. However, when the attack came at Arıburnu, he thought it was just a diversion, and waited two whole days at Bolayır up in the north where he expected the “real” invasion, before sending his reinforcements. The Turks blame this delay for allowing the ANZACs to dig in and reinforce their position; if it weren’t for Mustafa Kemal correctly assessing the importance of the Arıburnu assault and going there personally to ensure its defense, the initial ANZAC attack could even have been successful.
I do have one more story that I feel ties this whole thing together quite nicely. It’s a bit of personal family history, and therefore requires that I doxx myself ever so slightly;9 fortunately this essay is so long that very few will read it all the way to the end. For those few, here is a little tale with some relevant pictures from the Australian War Memorial (and one of my own).
I started writing this essay with the intent of publishing it for Anzac Day on April 25th, but it’s way past that now. The delay came from going down various Wikipedia/Google rabbit-holes leading to all sorts of places. One thing I got curious about was whether anyone I was related to had been at Gallipoli; I knew both of my grandfathers had been too young at the time. Since it’s all online these days, I searched the national archives to see what I could find out.
The best hit was this guy - Captain William John Handley, who it turns out was my grandfather’s cousin, or my first cousin twice removed. I don’t have a family photo of him,10 but I do have one of his brother and sister; here they are at my great-grandfather’s wedding in 1909:
William John Handley (WJH from now on) was born in Ipswich, near where I happen to live now. In those days, everyone who enlisted at the same recruiting centre ended up in the same regiment together; which is how some families, or even whole towns, lost all their sons in one battle. Being a cattle grazier, WJH could ride and shoot already, so he and his neighbours joined the 1st Light Horse Brigade, 2nd Regiment. He enlisted the week before Gallipoli, and was shipped out to Egypt in October 1915 to fight the Germans and the Ottomans in the Sinai and Palestine campaign.
WJH survived nearly three years of heat, sand and malaria in Sinai/Palestine. He got through all the major battles, including the capture of Jerusalem and Jericho, and the raid on Es Salt.
He even survived to see victory in the Battle of Abu Tellul on 14th July 1918. According to the war diaries of his commanding officer, his regiment was defending the posts at Musallabeh, dug in behind a lot of barbed wire, when the Germans attacked. Outnumbered ten to one, the six-and-a-half hour battle must have been harrowing (read the account in the war diaries here; scroll to appendices on page 10), but the attackers were thoroughly defeated.
It was in the aftermath of this battle that WJH’s luck ran out. Resting in his tent among the rocks at Musallabeh two days later, he was killed by an artillery shell along with four of his men. He is buried in the Jerusalem War Cemetary.
This defeat broke the morale of the attacking forces; according to Wikipedia the captured German and Ottoman prisoners had to be stopped from fighting each other. The remaining soldiers of the German 11th Reserve Jäger battalion never attacked the ANZACs again, and they were shortly withdrawn from Palestine.
So how does my family story tie in to the Gallipoli legend above? The commander of the attackers at Musallabeh was none other than Otto Liman von Sanders, i.e. the one that the Turks blame for the mess at Gallipoli. Remember that the ANZACs hold General Ian Hamilton responsible for that same mess; and Hamilton was fired from his command after his embarrassment at the hands of Mustafa Kemal. To repay the favour, the ANZACs similarly embarrassed Otto Liman von Sanders by defeating his crack German infantry, followed by the rest of his armies at the Battle of Megiddo. Liman was removed from his command of the Yıldırım Orduları, to be replaced with…
…Mustafa Kemal. He scraped an army back together and held the Turkish line for the remainder of the war, being undefeated by the ANZACs until the Ottoman surrender.
Its interesting that they don’t introduce the character of Mustafa Kemal by name in the TV miniseries Gallipoli (2015) except in the credits; I guess anyone who isn’t familiar with him from history will not likely recognise the name anyway. This does, however, allow for a cool in-joke for those of us in the know: the hero Tolly gets an opportunity to take a shot at Kemal, and misses obviously. Its interesting to think how differently history might have unfolded if Kemal had died at Gallipoli, before he played his part in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Turkish republic. But then, if the whole disastrous land invasion of Gallipoli had never happened, would Atatürk have risen as high as he did, without the chance to prove himself to his superiors on the battlefield? Would he ever have been promoted to command of the Caucasus Campaign, where he happened to work with his right-hand man, and (future) second President of the Republic, Mustafa İsmet İnönü? Without the removal of Liman von Sanders by the ANZACs, would Atatürk have been in the position he was at the end of WWI, ready to fight the War of Independence?
(I’m trying to think of TV or movies about this type of branching causality, but I’m drawing a blank, apart from something like Sliding Doors (1998). You should watch Coherence (2013) though.)
The other three days with restricted trading hours being Easter Friday, Labour day, and Christmas.
Australia’s last Gallipoli veteran was Alec Campbell, who died 16 May 2002 at the age of 103. Alec was only 16 when he lied about his age to enlist in the AIF without parental consent; he saw two months of fighting at Gallipoli before being evacuated with the other veterans in December.
This great line is from a 2008 editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald.
Apologies that I haven’t included more of them here. This spoilery review lists a few viewpoints that are missing from Gallipoli (2015); the most surprising one for me was that there were ~1000 members of the Indian Army’s Supply and Transport Corps, and their thousands of mules, present at Gallipoli at any one time. The end credits of the final episode mentions 1500 Indian casualties, but we never saw an Indian actor on screen.
I can see what he means here, but having watched the series before reading his comments, I still felt very negatively towards Hamilton at the end; he was just too self-serving.
The Çanakkale Straight is more commonly known as the Dardanelles in English.
The rank of “Onbaşı” (lit: “ten head”) is equivalent to Corporal.
The movie and most other sources claim that the shells weighed 275 kg each. Apparently the weight of 215 kg is correct; the mistake comes from assuming it was instead 215 okka, which in the old Ottoman units was equal to about 276 kg.
Not that I’m bothered. I’m sure that GPT-4 could already figure out who I am given all my posts, and access to the internet.
Thank you for this -- I tried and failed at one point to find the Gallipoli story from the Turkish point of view. I was looking for English-language written sources, not Turkish movies!
Okay wow, as a fellow settler-australian learning Türkçe this was fascinating and I’m going to need to watch these same series myself. While not related at all to Gallipoli, I just finished reading Mina Seçkin’s novel “The Four Humours,” which v cleverly weaves fragments of info on Turkish history (and especially waves of socialism and student protest) into a story of family secrets, inherited trauma, and the body. Really interesting to put pieces together via entanglements of literature n screen media!