The Battle of Gallipoli

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 one of the most studied in twentieth-century military history, and it is treated here as part of the broader story of the Ottoman military and warfare, the Ottoman navy, and the Janissary corps’ successors.

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 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 naval campaign, which is treated in greater detail in the article on the Ottoman navy, failed. The British and French battleships and cruisers, supported by minesweepers, attempted to force the straits on 18 March 1915; three British battleships were sunk and three others badly damaged by mines and Ottoman shore fire. 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. 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 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 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. 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.

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. In Turkey, the campaign is commemorated as a victory, 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, and it has been compared, in the long history of Ottoman gunpowder siege warfare, with the great defensive sieges of the classical period such as the Great Siege of Malta and the siege of Vienna.

Related articles

• 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 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 famous admiral whose tradition of naval defence the Ottoman forces at the Dardanelles in 1915 consciously echoed.