Gallipoli
:''For other uses, see
Gallipoli (disambiguation) |
Satellite image of the Gallipoli peninsula and surrounding area |
Gallipoli, called
Gelibolu in modern
Turkish, (
Greek: Καλλίπολις), is a town in northwestern
Turkey. The name derives from the
Greek Kallipolis, meaning "Beautiful City". It is located on the
Gallipoli Peninsula (Gelibolu Yarımadası), with the
Aegean Sea to the west and the
Dardanelles straits to the east.
Antiquity, Byzantium and crusaders
Kallipolis, or in Latin
Callipolis, was a city in the southern part of the
Thracian Chersonese ("Chersonesus Thracica" in Latin, now known as the Gallipoli Peninsula), on the right shore, and at the entrance of the Dardanelles.
The Byzantine Emperor
Justinian I fortified it and established there important military warehouses for corn and wine.
In 1304 it became the centre of that strange
crusader state created by the
Almugavares, or Catalonian routiers, who burned it in 1307, before retiring to
Cassandria.
Ottoman era
After the devastating 1357 earthquake the Greek city was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman possession in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.
The peninsula which was inhabited by populations of the
Byzantine Empire was gradually conquered by the
Ottoman Empire starting from
13th century onwards until
the 15th. The
Greeks living there were allowed to continue their everyday life. Gallipoli (in Turkish,
Gelibolu) made was the chief town of a
Kaymakamlik (district) in the
vilayet (Wali's province) of
Adrianople, with about 30,000 inhabitants, Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.
Gallipoli became a major
encampment for British and French forces in
1854 during the
Crimean War, and the harbour was also a stopping-off point on the way to
Constantinople. [
1] [
2]
The peninsula did not see any more wars up until
World War I when the
British Empire allies trying to find a way to reach their troubled ally in the east,
Imperial Russia, decided to try to obtain passage to the east. The Ottomans set up defensive fortifications along the peninsula with
German help.
In
Australia,
New Zealand and
Newfoundland, Gallipoli is the name given to the Allied
Campaign on the peninsula during
World War I, usually known in
Britain as the Dardanelles Campaign and in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale. This was an attempt to push through the Dardanelles and capture
Constantinople (now
Istanbul). On
April 25,
1915, as part of an allied force of British and
French troops,
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) a small bay at the western end of the Peninsula (today officially called
Anzac Cove). The campaign was miraculously successful for the Turks and a catastrophe for the invaders and Russia which eventually would lead to civil war partly due to this unsuccessful campaign. The ANZACs evacuated on
December 19,
1915 and the other elements of the invasion force a little later. There were around 180,000 Allied casualties and 220,000 Turkish casualties. This campaign has become a "
founding myth" for both
Australia and
New Zealand, and
Anzac Day is still commemorated as a holiday in both countries. In fact, it is one of those rare battles that both sides seem to remember fondly. According to Turks, it is a rebirth of a nation and also is considered as a great turning point for their success during the world war I. Many mementos of the Gallipoli campaign can be seen in the museum at the
Australian War Memorial in
Canberra, Australia, and at the
Auckland War Memorial Museum in
Auckland, New Zealand. This campaign also put a dent in the armour of
Winston Churchill, then the
First Lord of the Admiralty, who had commissioned the plans to invade the Dardanelles. He talks about this campaign vividly in his memoirs. A small artillery detachment was sent by Greece to aid the battle, led by Antonios Georgiadis (in some accounts Antonios Pispas, as he later changed his surname).
The Gallipoli campaign also gave an important boost to the career of
Mustafa KemalPasa, who was at that time a little-known army commander. Mustafa Kemal Pasa exceeded his authority and contravened orders in order to halt the Allied advance and eventually drive them back. His famous speech "I do not commend you to fight, I commend you to die" shows his couragious and determined personality and also shows the main character of Turkish Warrior. He went on to found the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire.
ANZAC Day
On
April 25,
2005, to mark the 90th
anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, government officials from Australia and New Zealand, most of the last surviving Gallipoli veterans, and many Australian and New Zealand tourists travelled to Turkey for a special dawn service at Gallipoli. Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark were also in attendance, and Clark was accompanied by the official NZ defense force party, veterans of several past wars and 10 New Zealand college students who won the New Zealand 'Prime Minister's Essay Competition' with their works about Gallipoli. Attendance at the
ANZAC Day dawn service at Gallipoli has become popular since the 75th anniversary. Upwards of 10,000 people have attended services in Gallipoli.
Until
1999 the Gallipoli dawn service was held at the Ari Burnu war
cemetery at
Anzac Cove, but the growing numbers of people attending resulted in the construction of a more spacious site on
North Beach, known as the "Anzac Commemorative Site".
Influence on the arts
The Battle of Gallipoli is the subject of a
1981 movie, entitled
Gallipoli, directed by
Peter Weir and starring
Mel Gibson. The film has been criticised for portraying the campaign as a mainly Australian one. In fact twice as many British troops died at Gallipoli as ANZACs.
Eric Bogle wrote in
1972 his famous
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda after having watched in Australia a parade of elderly veterans of the Gallipoli campaign. Versions of this song were later recorded by
June Tabor and
The Pogues separately.
The campaign is also the subject of a
2005 documentary, also named
Gallipoli, by the Turkish filmmaker
Tolga Örnek, showing the bravery and the suffering on both sides through the use of surviving diaries and letters of the soldiers. For this film he has been awarded an honorary medal in the general division of the Order of Australia.[
3]
Callipolis remains a Roman Catholic
titular bishopric in the former Roman province of
Thrace. Callipolis was a suffragan of
Heracleia. Lequien (I, 1123) mentions only six Greek bishops, the first as being present at the
Council of Ephesus in 431, when the see was united to that of
Coela (Coelia or Coele), the last about 1500. His list could easily be increased, for the Greek Orthodox see still exists; it was raised in 1904 to the rank of a
metropolis, without suffragans, after the manner of most Greek metropolitan sees. Lequien (III, 971) also gives the names of eight Latin bishops, from 1208 to 1518. (See Eubel, I, 269, note.) There are numerous schools and a small museum; a large cemetery is the resting place of many French soldiers who died of disease (chiefly cholera) during the
Crimean War. The port is bad and trade unimportant, for want of roads. A Catholic mission was conducted in the Ottoman days by
Assumpionist Fathers; there are also a number of Armenian and Greek Catholics, with priests of their respective rites.
(incomplete)
* [
4]
