‘Allies’ to mark Gallipoli centenary
Print Edition
Thousands of Australians, New Zealanders and Turks gathered on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula yesterday ahead of the 100th anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of World War I.
Security was especially tight as the former adversaries now face a common threat from Islamist militant violence.
In 1915, thousands of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers struggled ashore on a narrow beach at Gallipoli at the start of a campaign that would claim more than 130,000 lives.
The area has become a site of pilgrimage for visitors who honor their nations’ fallen in graveyards halfway around the world on ANZAC Day every April 25.
The centenary is set to see the largest ever commemoration, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Britain’s Prince Charles leading the ceremonies.
“The 100th anniversary is a very important because we’re at a time where this campaign ceases to be about memory and slides into history,” said Bruce Scates, chair of history and Australian studies at Melbourne’s Monash University.
“All of the veterans have died, those with any living memory of the Great War have gone,” said Scates, the grandson of a Gallipoli veteran who has been advising the Australian government on how to mark the centenary.
Although the Allied forces also included British, Irish, French, Indians, Gurkhas and Canadians, Gallipoli has become particularly associated with the Australians and New Zealanders, marking a point where they came of age as nations less beholden to Britain.
Turkey and Australia now find themselves allies in a modern-day struggle.
Australian police on Saturday foiled what they said was an Islamic State-inspired attack planned at an event to mark the centenary.
Turkey, which borders Syria and Iraq, and is a major transit route for foreign fighters headed there, is also on alert.
“It’s good that we’re now exchanging information ... between our various agencies because the threat posed by violent extremism, particularly by the Daesh death cult, is real and it is global,” Abbott told a news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Wednesday.
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