What Gallipoli can teach us about the Iraq war
A hundred years ago on Saturday, tens of thousands of allied troops, led by Australians and New Zealanders, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, on the northern bank of the Dardanelles in Turkey. The plan, devised by Winston Churchill, was to capture Istanbul and give Russia, an ally in the first world war as in the […]Richard Norton-Taylor writes for the Guardian:
A hundred years ago on Saturday, tens of thousands of allied troops, led by Australians and New Zealanders, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, on the northern bank of the Dardanelles in Turkey. The plan, devised by Winston Churchill, was to capture Istanbul and give Russia, an ally in the first world war as in the second, protected access to the Mediterranean. On 25 April, named Anzac Day after the first action by the new joint Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, wreaths will be laid, and songs sung, in memory of the large number of casualties in a military disaster blamed squarely on British commanders.
The assumption was that the Turks would quickly succumb to a naval bombardment. Instead, British and French warships succumbed to bombardment by Turkish guns, to mines, and bad weather. By the end of the year, as the oppressive heat turned to bitter cold, the allies evacuated, at a cost in lives of almost 9,000 Australians, almost 3,000 New Zealanders, 35,000 British and 10,000 French. More than double these numbers were wounded. Though an estimated 60,000 Turks were also killed, it was a late morale-booster for leaders of the decaying Ottoman empire.
