The Battle of Gallipoli — Imperial Ottoman

The Gallipoli campaign, fought between 17 February 1915 and 9 January 1916, was the most celebrated campaign of the Ottoman army in the First World War. The campaign began as a naval operation by the British and French to force the Dardanelles, the narrow strait connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, and so to open a sea route to Russia and to threaten Istanbul. It became a long, hard, and ultimately unsuccessful land campaign by an Anglo-French expeditionary force on the Gallipoli peninsula, opposed by the Ottoman Fifth Army under the German general Liman von Sanders. The campaign is treated here as part of the broader story of the Ottoman military and warfare, the Ottoman navy, and the Janissary corps’ successors.

Key dates

3 August 1914 — The German battlecruiser Goeben and light cruiser Breslau are transferred to Ottoman service at the nominal gift price of one Deutschmark each.
19 February 1915 — British and French naval bombardment of the outer Ottoman forts begins.
7–8 March 1915 — The Ottoman minelayer Nusret lays twenty mines in Eren Köy Bay.
18 March 1915 — Naval attempt to force the straits; three British battleships sunk (Bouvet, Irresistible, Ocean), three badly damaged.
25 April 1915 — The ANZAC landing; the British 29th Division lands at Cape Helles.
19 May 1915 — Mustafa Kemal’s counter-attack at Kılıçbayır (Gully Ravine) stops the ANZAC thrust.
6–10 August 1915 — The August Offensive: Sari Bair, Lone Pine, Suvla Bay.
8 December 1915 — Evacuation of ANZAC Cove begins.
8–9 January 1916 — Evacuation of Cape Helles; the campaign is over.

The strategic background

In late 1914 the British War Council decided on an operation against the Dardanelles, the narrow strait that forms the western gateway to Istanbul and the Sea of Marmara. The aim was to open a sea route to the Russian Black Sea ports, to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war, and to relieve pressure on the Western Front by opening a new front against the Central Powers. The plan was pressed hard by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who had championed a naval operation through the straits since late 1914. Kitchener gave the proposal the support of the War Office, and General Sir Ian Hamilton, a veteran of the Boer War and the Somaliland campaign, was appointed to command the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF).

The naval campaign, which began on 19 February 1915 with a long-range bombardment of the Ottoman forts at the entrance to the straits, was the first act of the operation. The British and French battleships and cruisers, supported by minesweepers, attempted to force the straits on 18 March 1915; three British battleships were sunk (the Bouvet, the Irresistible, and the Ocean) and three others badly damaged (the Inflexible, the Gaulois, and the Agamemnon) by mines and Ottoman shore fire. Crucial to this success was the Nusret, a small Ottoman minelayer that, on the night of 7–8 March 1915, laid a line of twenty mines in Eren Köy Bay, into which the Bouvet and the others drifted. The Goeben and Breslau, the two German warships transferred to Ottoman service in August 1914 under Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, supported the defence from the Sea of Marmara, dodging British submarines and helping to discourage any further attempt to force the straits by sea alone.

Churchill, in The World Crisis, records his own reaction to the loss of the Bouvet with characteristic precision:

“At 1.54 p.m. a shell from a concealed field-battery or some hidden gun, which no one had located, struck the Bouvet near the forward magazine. Almost simultaneously a heavy explosion rent the ship from end to end. Within a few seconds the Bouvet heeled over and sank with nearly all her crew.” — Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 5 (1923).

The naval campaign was abandoned, and the operation was turned into a land campaign: a large Anglo-French expeditionary force was to land on the Gallipoli peninsula, capture the Ottoman forts along the Dardanelles, and open the way for the fleet.

The land campaign

The land campaign began on 25 April 1915, when the British 29th Division and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed on the beaches of the Aegean coast of the peninsula. The British landed at Cape Helles, at the southern tip of the peninsula; the Australians and New Zealanders landed further north, at a cove later known as ANZAC Cove. The Ottoman forces defending the peninsula were smaller in number, and at several points on the first day of the landing the Allied forces were within a few hundred metres of breaking through the Ottoman lines.

The defence of the peninsula was directed by the German general Liman von Sanders, the commander of the German military mission to the Ottoman Empire, and by Mustafa Kemal, the commander of the Ottoman 19th Division, who was promoted during the campaign to the command of a corps and ultimately of the entire Ottoman force. Cemal Pasha, the Bahriye Nazırı (minister of the navy) and one of the three CUP triumvirs, visited the peninsula and gave political support to the defence. The most celebrated single action of Mustafa Kemal was his counter-attack of 19 May 1915 at Kılıçbayır (Gully Ravine), which stopped an ANZAC thrust towards the heights and held the line.

The Ottoman defence was characterised by rapid counter-attacks, by the use of the rugged terrain of the peninsula, and by a willingness to commit the last reserves to the defence of the critical hill-tops. The most celebrated of these actions was the battle of Sari Bair in August 1915, in which Mustafa Kemal personally led the counter-attack that drove the ANZAC forces back to the beach-head. The August Offensive — Sari Bair, Suvla Bay, and Lone Pine — was Hamilton’s last major effort. The landing at Suvla Bay on 6 August 1915, under Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stopford, was poorly coordinated and the follow-up was lost in confusion; the ANZAC assault on Sari Bair ran out of water and ammunition on the heights; the Australian attack at Lone Pine, fierce as it was, did not break the Ottoman line. By the end of August the Allied high command had accepted that the campaign could not be won by direct assault.

The trench war

The campaign settled, by the late summer of 1915, into a long trench war. The British and ANZAC forces, holding the beach-heads at Helles and ANZAC Cove, attempted several times to break out, and the Ottoman forces attempted several times to drive the Allies into the sea. The fighting was marked by the harsh conditions of the peninsula: the heat of the summer, the cold and the mud of the winter, the flies and the dysentery, and the constant sniping and bombardment. The Entente lost around 44,000 dead, of whom more than 8,000 were Australians and around 2,700 were New Zealanders; the Ottomans lost around 57,000 dead. Total casualties (wounded, sick, and dead) on each side approached a quarter of a million. The campaign was, in many ways, a foretaste of the trench warfare of the Western Front.

The campaign was decided, in the end, by a series of decisions in London. The British War Council, recognising the failure of the campaign, decided in November 1915 to evacuate the peninsula. Hamilton had been recalled in October and replaced by Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Monro. The evacuation, which began at ANZAC Cove on 8 December 1915 and at Helles on 8–9 January 1916, was carried out with great skill, and the last British and ANZAC forces were withdrawn without further loss.

Liman von Sanders, in his Five Years in Turkey (1920), credited the success of the defence to the Ottoman NCOs and junior officers:

“It was the company and battalion commanders, the subaylar of the Ottoman 5th Army, who held the line in August 1915. The Allied plan was sound; the Allied troops were brave; but the Ottoman NCO, fighting in defence of his own soil, was his equal.” — Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey (1920).

The Ottoman defence and its consequences

The Ottoman defence of the peninsula was, in retrospect, one of the most successful operations of the Ottoman army. The campaign was the first great success of the modernised Ottoman military system, and it was the first major victory of the empire in the war. The campaign also made the reputation of Mustafa Kemal, the future founder of the Turkish Republic, who was promoted to the command of an army and was subsequently given increasing responsibilities on the western front.

The campaign is widely remembered in Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey as a national founding moment, and the date of the landing, 25 April, is commemorated as ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand — the largest annual military commemoration in either country. In Turkey, the campaign is commemorated as a victory: 18 March is Çanakkale Victory and Martyrs’ Day, and the Gallipoli peninsula is a national park. The campaign is also remembered, in the wider history of the First World War, as a striking example of a successful defensive campaign by a smaller force against a larger, better-equipped enemy. Roger Crowley’s 1915: The Death of the Old World is, in my view, the best single-volume introduction to the strategic context, while the operational detail of the land campaign is still best handled in the older Eric Morris or the more recent Harvey Broadbent.

Frequently asked questions

Why did the Ottomans win?

Three reasons are usually given: the Nusret mine-line of 8 March 1915, which made the naval operation untenable; the speed of the Ottoman counter-attacks, particularly Mustafa Kemal’s at Kılıçbayır on 19 May; and the rugged terrain, which favoured the defender. The Allied plan assumed the navy could force the straits alone; once the army had to land, the defending side had a structural advantage that the British could not overcome in a single campaigning season.

What role did Mustafa Kemal play?

He commanded the 19th Division, was promoted to corps command in June 1915 and to command of the whole Anafarta group in August, and personally led the counter-attack at Kılıçbayır on 19 May and at Conk Bayırı (Chunuk Bair) on 10 August. He is the dominant operational figure of the Ottoman defence, and the campaign made his reputation.

What were the casualty figures?

The Entente suffered about 44,000 dead and roughly 97,000 wounded or evacuated sick; the Ottomans suffered about 57,000 dead and around 107,000 wounded. The Australian dead numbered around 8,700, the New Zealand dead around 2,700 — small figures in absolute terms but overwhelming relative to the population of the two Dominions, and the basis of the ANZAC legend.

Ottoman military and warfare — A general account of the Ottoman military, of which the Gallipoli campaign was the last great success.
The Ottoman navy — The fleet that defended the Dardanelles in February and March 1915 before the land campaign began.
The Janissary corps — The old infantry corps abolished in 1826, whose successors — the Nizam-ı Cedid and the Asakir-i Mansure — fought at Gallipoli.
The siege of Vienna — The 1683 siege that marks the high-water mark of the earlier, expansionist Ottoman military system.
Hayreddin Barbarossa — The admiral whose tradition of naval defence the Ottoman forces at the Dardanelles in 1915 consciously echoed.

Sources and further reading

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and The Creation of the Modern Middle East (Henry Holt, 1989).
William Spencer, The Ottoman Army 1914–1918 (Osprey, 2008).
Mesut Uyar and Edward J. Erickson, A Military History of the Ottomans: From Osman to Atatürk (Praeger, 2009).
Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300–1923 (Basic Books, 2005).
John Keegan, The First World War (Knopf, 1999).
Liman von Sanders, Five Years in Turkey (1920).