Gallipoli Campaign
The Gallipoli Campaign of 1915 was an Allied attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the First World War by seizing the Dardanelles strait and threatening Constantinople. It ended in failure after roughly eight months of fighting, with heavy casualties on both sides. Its significance reaches well beyond the battlefield: for Australia and New Zealand, it became a defining national memory, commemorated each year on ANZAC Day.
The campaign grew out of the stalemate on the Western Front. Ottoman entry into the war in late 1914 closed the strait, cutting the Allies' sea route to Russia, which needed munitions and wanted to export grain. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was among the leading advocates of a naval operation to force the Dardanelles. The hope was that warships alone might open the passage, shift the war's balance, and relieve pressure on Russia. Many planners underestimated Ottoman defenses and the resolve of their soldiers.
The naval attempt came first. In March 1915 a British and French fleet tried to push through the strait but lost several ships, mainly to mines, and withdrew. The Allies then turned to a land invasion. On 25 April, British, French, and troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. The ANZACs came ashore at a spot on the Aegean coast later called Anzac Cove, though they were apparently landed north of their intended beach, facing steep, broken ground. Ottoman defenders, among them forces under Mustafa Kemal, counterattacked quickly and held the high ground.
The fighting settled into trench warfare much like that in France, worsened by heat, flies, scarce water, and disease. Further landings in August, notably at Suvla Bay, and offensives such as the fight at Lone Pine, failed to break the deadlock. Allied leaders eventually accepted that the position was untenable. The evacuation, carried out in December 1915 and January 1916, was widely regarded as one of the campaign's best-executed operations, with few casualties. Total deaths are usually estimated in the tens of thousands on each side, with the Ottoman toll probably higher, though figures vary by source.
The consequences were considerable. The campaign damaged Churchill's career for a time and contributed to political upheaval in Britain. For the Ottoman Empire it was a major victory, and it strengthened the reputation of Mustafa Kemal, later Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. In Australia and New Zealand, the sacrifice of young volunteers in a distant war became central to ideas of national character, though historians note that this memory has been shaped and debated over time. Today the sites are places of pilgrimage, and Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand jointly honor the dead.