Gallipoli which country

The peninsula of Gallipoli was the first Ottoman and Muslim territory in the European continent conquered by the early Ottomans in the middle of the 14th century. Fatefully, years later, the Ottomans held their last stance against the two most powerful western European states, the British and French, while defending the same peninsula. The Ottoman leadership called for a military recruitment under the slogan of "To Canakkale! As many as one million men, according to war historian Uslu, set out to join the fighting.

Even though many of them never made it there, or were deployed elsewhere, for their families they were "in Canakkale," Uslu said. The inflow of recruits was overwhelming. The empire sent them to other locations along with the survivors of the Gallipoli, many of whom died saving the battle fronts like Galicia. Yet in the popular Turkish imagination, whoever died in World War I, is viewed as having died "in Canakkale," according to Uslu, who has recorded hundreds of accounts from WWI Ottoman veterans' families.

The trauma Ottoman soldiers went through was enormous and for many unbearable. Out of , casualties in Gallipoli, more than 20, ended up in mental asylums. At least 57, Ottoman soldiers died and over , were wounded in the campaign.

A century later, almost every Turkish town has a story of Gallipoli. Uslu narrated the story of one veteran named Hasan, who had lost his leg in the battle. When he returned home without a leg, his fiancee left him.

He used an iron leg as a replacement, which is now in Uslu's war museum. The battle also brought out the impossible from the Ottoman soldiers. He then fired them at the warship. After the war, when he was asked to lift a similar shell and pose for a photograph, he could not lift it. But he maintained that "If war breaks out again," he will "lift it again. The Gallipoli campaign not only evoked a sense of Turkish nationalism, it also gave the country a new leader, Mustafa Kemal.

Mustafa Kemal served as a lieutenant colonel in the Ottoman army. Mustafa Kemal was the commander of the 19th division. He received a late night order from his superiors to send a battalion to counter the Anzac march at am. By then, the Anzacs were already climbing the tiny hillside named Chanuk Bair, a crucial landing point for the Allied forces. Military experts believe that if the Anzacs had captured Chanuk Bair, the Allied forces would have gained an upper hand in the Gallipoli campaign.

But Mustafa Kemal's military finesse made it hard for the allied troops to make any geographical gains. Apart from overseeing his battalion, he chose to face the enemy lines by himself — a crucial decision that shaped both his career and the future of modern day Turkey. On April 25, when the Anzacs launched a land invasion, he ordered his best troops, the famous 57th regiment, to join the fight.

In times of immense difficulty, Mustafa Kemal spoke the words of courage and inspiration: "I don't order you to attack, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die other troops and commanders can take our places. By the end of the day, most soldiers of the 57th regiment were dead. By the end of the World War I, the regiment had lost all its soldiers. As a mark of respect, the Turkish Armed Forces continues to maintain the 57th regiment, but without any living members.

With the Ottomans losing most of their territory by the end of the World War I, the empire's top military leadership left the country, fearing a public backlash. Though the war was disastrous for the empire, many Turks looked up to a new leader in the shape of Mustafa Kemal, who was promoted to the rank of general for his outstanding gallantry during the Gallipoli campaign.

He gave the majority of Ottoman subjects the hope necessary to leave behind what was lost and look ahead to build a new future. In , a few months after the World War I, Mustafa Kemal faced new adversaries: Greece saw an opportunity to take land from the crumbling Ottoman Empire and invaded the western domains of Anatolia.

In , he led a political movement called Kuvayi Milliye [National Forces] to establish the Republic of Turkey, a modern nation-state. He took Ataturk, which means the father of the Turks, as his surname. Known for his strong commitment to secular values, Ataturk's political ideas were quite in sync with French laicism, a radical interpretation of secularism that is nowadays seen in the form of the headscarf ban in public schools in France.

Ataturk founded the Turkish Republic on similar principles, dissolving the Muslim caliphate and the Ottoman sultanate. Though he positioned himself as a man who distanced himself from Islamic traditions, he always wanted to have Gazi, which literally means a veteran of Jihad, as his initial title.

One of the reasons for this particular choice could be hidden in the fact he was leading an army which "was the last army of Islam," in the words of a Turkish poet, Yahya Kemal Beyatli, who dedicated his poem to the definitive Turkish victory against the Greeks on August 26, Every year, Turks remember the most significant victory of the Ottoman Empire on March 18, as well at least 57, lives that were lost fighting off the Allied invasion at Gallipoli.

Its echoes continue to resonate today. Under tremendous pressure to renew the attack, Admiral Sackville Carden, the British naval commander in the region, suffered a nervous collapse and was replaced by Vice-Admiral Sir John de Robeck. On March 18, 18 Allied battleships entered the straits; Turkish fire, including undetected mines, sank three of the ships and severely damaged three others.

In the wake of the failed naval attack, preparations began for largescale troop landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Meanwhile, the Turks boosted their defenses under the command of the German general Liman von Sanders, who began positioning Ottoman troops along the shore where he expected the landings would take place. On April 25, , the Allies launched their invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The latter site was later dubbed Anzac Cove, in honor of the Australian and New Zealand troops who fought so valiantly against determined Turkish defenders to establish the beachhead there.

After the initial landing, the Allies were able to make little progress from their initial landing sites, even as the Turks gathered more and more troops on the peninsula from both the Palestine and Caucasus fronts.

In an attempt to break the stalemate, the Allies made another major troop landing on August 6 at Suvla Bay, combined with a northwards advance from Anzac Cove towards the heights at Sari Bair and a diversionary action at Helles. The surprise landings at Suvla Bay proceeded against little opposition, but Allied indecision and delay stalled their progress in all three locations, allowing Ottoman reinforcements to arrive and shore up their defenses.

In mid-October, Hamilton argued that a proposed evacuation of the peninsula would cost up to 50 percent casualties; British authorities subsequently recalled him and installed Sir Charles Monro in his place. The British government authorized the evacuation to begin from Suvla Bay on December 7; the last troops left Helles on January 9, In all, some , Allied forces took part in the Gallipoli Campaign, at a cost of more than , casualties, including some 46, dead.

On the Turkish side, the campaign also cost an estimated , casualties, with 65, killed. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

The Battle of the Somme, which took place from July to November , began as an Allied offensive against German forces on the Western Front and turned into one of the most bitter and costly battles of World War I. British forces suffered more than 57, casualties—including For four years, from to , World War I raged across Europe's western and eastern fronts, after growing tensions and then the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war.

Trench warfare and the early use of tanks, submarines and airplanes meant the Army and U. Marine Corps troops descended on the Pacific island of Okinawa From July 10 through October 31, , pilots and support crews on both sides took to the Dunkirk is a small town on the coast of France that was the scene of a massive military campaign during World War II.

On September 15, , U.