Johnny Turk After Gallipoli

For Turkey and the Turks, Gallipoli can be seen as the flint that lit the inferno that powered the journey to the establishment of the modern Turkish State.

The events that were unleashed in 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula proved to be, as Professor Kemal Karpat has put it:

“a watershed between the two phases of the Turkish Revolution…”

In essence, the watershed was between the 19th century developments in the shrinking Ottoman Empire encompassing reforms, foreign influences, and political activity, and the post 1918 emergence of a smaller Turkey as a self-contained and sovereign nation-state. In this sense Gallipoli, for Turkey, was equally important, if not more so, than for Australia and New Zealand, in the realisation of its national identity. It was the homeland that was under threat.

The meaning of Gallipoli for Australians is now something of a well-worn cliché that has been re-run through stages of heroism, perceptions of victimisation at the hands of a colonial power, glorification of a national character of hardiness, the exploitation of one class by another, the sorrow at the great blunder. All are part of the truth and, in fact, there are many aspects of the events surrounding the Allies campaign at Gallipoli that are yet to be fully told.

But for Turkey and the Turks, Gallipoli can be seen as the flint that lit the inferno that powered the journey to the establishment of the modern Turkish State.

It is, of course, unrealistic and too simplistic to say that the events of 1915 were the only elements that led to the 1923 Republic. Consider the declined and moribund state of the Ottoman Empire, the rivalries of the Great Powers to fill its vacuum, and the work of Ottoman reformers of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

But the nature of the new state as it eventuated has to have some important relationship with the events of 1915 because of the fact that the leader of the revolution that brought about that state and its first President, Kemal Atatürk, happened to be the local commander of the Ottoman forces in the Gallipoli area where the Anzacs landed on 25th April 1915. Moreover, he was successful in preventing those first Anzac units from advancing till reinforcements could be brought up. And again, later in the campaign when the last great offensive by the Allies to capture the peninsula was made, the defence and re-capture of the crucially strategic hills of Conk Bayırı (Chunuk Bair) and Kılıç Bayır (Baby 700) was led successfully by Kemal, known then simply as Major Mustafa Kemal.

Kemal was able to demonstrate his abilities as a leader, and Turks, after suffering constant defeats and loss of respect and honour, could once again under his leadership regain much of that lost respect and honour. This served as the spur for Kemal to aspire to a vision of a sovereign, secure, modern nation for Turks, without the encumbrances of governing a rebellious empire or keeping covetous imperial rivals at bay.

He believed that with efficient, enlightened, caring leadership, Turks were capable of being better than “sick men”. He had seen it proven in the Gallipoli campaign and in the tragic effects of becoming involved in war in the first place. Looking back from 1927, he described the state of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire as follows:

“A country collapsed at the edge of a chasm (because of) bloody struggles with various enemies, a war that went on for years. After that, the new country, the new society, the new state looked upon with respect - inside and outside, and incessant revolutions to achieve these things …”

But Kemal, of course, at the time of Gallipoli was a divisional commander and removed from the supreme command, and naturally through internal political considerations, his exploits would not have been given wide national publicity. However, to colleagues, military and political, his reputation received that essential initial boost that he would be able to build on later. Even the official British History of the Great War recognises Kemal’s contribution as being extra-ordinary:

“Seldom in history can the exertions of a single divisional commander have exercised, on three separate occasions, so profound an influence, not only on the course of a battle, but, perhaps, on the fate of a campaign and even the destiny of a nation.”

One could postulate the following basic question: Would Turkey have had a Republic, and one of its type if Major Mustafa Kemal had not been out exercising his troops on Gallipoli on 25th April 1915? Of course, the ifs and buts of history are a fascinating academic study. What would have happened for example if the Ottomans had managed to stay out of World War I? Would there have been a Russian Revolution? Would there have been an Anzac Day and the associated legend if Winston Churchill had not devised the plan to force the Dardanelles in February and March 1915?

As it happened it was that fateful decision which led the Ottomans to their first success in military terms for many years. This was the repulsion of the French and British navies in the sea battles culminating on the 18th March 1915. This date, when a third of the Allied ships trying to force their way past the Çanakkale (Dardanelles) forts and mines, were destroyed or sunk, has traditionally been Turkey’s closest approximation to Anzac Day, though not a public holiday in Turkey. However, in recent years the exploits of Kemal Atatürk and Turkish forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula have gained more interest and kudos within Turkey.

The two stages of the campaign are of course related to each other in more ways than one. Militarily, the Allied land attack on the peninsula was a secondary attempt to achieve the fall of Istanbul and the opening of the Dardanelles to the Black Sea after the failure of the sea attack. Moreover, the halting of the Allied land advance gave the Turks their second great military success. As Karpat has said, these victories were probably the greatest self-realisation that became the watershed in confidence to pursue the later War of Independence, and ultimately Revolution.

Chunuk Bair: The Crucial Battle

Mustafa Kemal’s handling of the big Allied attack of 7th August at Conk Bayırı (of which the Australian action at Lone Pine was a diversionary feint) is worth noting as this in many ways was even more critical and, for the ordinary soldier on both sides, more horrendous. The Allied command had decided to make one last effort to take the high hills of Conk Bayırı (Chunuk Bair) and Kılıçbayır (Baby 700) that controlled the peninsula before winter set in. Masses of British forces were landed at Suvla Bay to the north of Anzac and Conk Bayırı in early August and the attack began on 6th August.

In his memoirs Kemal recalled:

“Chunuk Bair was turned into a kind of hell. From the sky came a downpour of shrapnel and iron. The heavy naval shells sunk deep into the ground, then burst, opening huge cavities all around us. The whole of Chunuk Bair was enveloped in thick smoke and fire. Everyone waited resignedly for what fate would bring. I asked one commander where his troops were. He replied: Here are my troops - those who lie dead.”

The New Zealanders who led the attack as shock troops succeeded in driving the Turkish forces off the top of Conk Bayırı but Kemal saw that a counter attack could succeed if only he could muster the effort from his men:

“I had come to the conclusion that we could defeat the enemy by means of a sudden assault. The initial attack was to be totally silent - neither artillery nor rifle fire. No weapon but the bayonet must be used. Just before 4.30 a.m., I stood before the troops with other officers. I passed down the line and gave instructions in a low voice. Soldiers, there is no doubt at all that we are going to defeat the enemy in front of you. But do not hurry. Let me go ahead first. As soon as you see me raise my whip then you will all leap forward. After instructing the officers to do the same I took a few steps forward and raised my whip. Instantly our soldiers with fixed bayonets and the officers with drawn swords leapt into the darkness like lions. A moment later, the only sound which came from the enemy trenches was the heavenly cry of Allah Allah.”

General Sir Ian Hamilton, British Commander of Allied Forces finishes the story of Conk Bayırı:

“Our troops were driven clean down the hill. Generals fought in the ranks and men dropped their scientific weapons and caught one another by the throat … The Turks came on again, fighting magnificently calling upon the name of God. Our men stood to it and maintained by many deeds of daring, the old traditions of their race. There was no flinching. They died in the ranks as they stood.”

No further major attempt was made to push the Turkish forces back to the Dardanelles and the evacuation took place in November.

Kemal’s Vision for Turkey

Mustafa Kemal, in spite of these victories and, as I hinted at earlier, probably as a result of them, was unable to gain more influence in high military and political circles amongst the ruling Ottoman elite. This was frustrating to Mustafa Kemal as he had been a reformist agitator with The Young Turk movement and the Party of Union and Progress which had brought a taste of more democratic government to the Ottomans after a revolt of army officers had forced the Sultan to adopt a more liberal form of government in 1908. To Kemal, though, the reforms brought in slowly over the previous century and since the 1908 putsch were no more than a drop in the ocean. His dream lay in a dynamic new direction. The acceptance that empires for Turkey, and that included the Young Turks’ flirtation with the idea of Pan-Turkic empires, was an obsolete idea, and that the house of Osman (the Ottoman Sultanate) was obsolete along with it. Turkey’s destiny thus lay in a self-contained sovereign state - a Republic along Western lines, and that meant a true revolution with the inevitable civil war.

So after the final Ottoman and German defeat in 1918 Mustafa Kemal set out to put these dreams into reality. Karpat sees the Turkish Revolution in two phases. First, a slow preparatory phase over a century and a half of gradual social change, and secondly, an acute dynamic phase in which Gallipoli and Kemal had vital parts to play.

Turkey’s leaders at that time after the defeat of 1918 were Enver Pasha and Talat Pasha, the Sultan having been reduced to a mere, but strongly symbolic figurehead. Mustafa Kemal had no confidence in their leadership and firmly believed that a political solution was also needed for Turkey to survive after its defeat. He had recognised that the “acute stage” to use Karpat’s phrase was upon them. Kemal, however, had no power or influence with the government. With the 1918 Armistice, Enver fled to Berlin and later died fighting the Red Army in alliance with the White Russians near Bokhara. The new Prime Minister Izzet Pasha soon received Kemal’s complaints about an armistice that gave occupation of the Dardanelles to the Allies (a feat that 86,000 Turkish soldiers had died averting in 1915) and required the de-mobilisation of the Turkish army:

“The war may be over for our allies but the war which concerns us for our own independence begins from this moment.”

After the armistice of the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919, Greek Prime Minister Venizelos, laid formal claim to İzmir, known then to non-Turks as Smyrna. A Greek occupation of the city took place on the 15th May. Turks in the area resisted to the best of their reduced capability - a resistance that led to a massacre of Turks in the city and surrounding provinces. The Turkish War of Independence began in earnest.

Mustafa Kemal sent a circular cable in cypher to all trusted civil and military leaders from the East of Turkey where he had been sent as Inspector General of the Ninth Army (later renumbered as the Third Army) to get him away from Istanbul:

“1. The integrity of the country, the independence of the nation are in danger.

2. The central government is unable to discharge the duties for which it is responsible. As a result, the nation is regarded as non-existent.

3. Only the will and resolution of the nation can save the independence of the nation.”

Kemal had begun his thrust to gain power. He went to the East, mobilising support to embark on two simultaneous struggles, one against the Allies’ puppet government of the Sultan and Ottomans in Istanbul and one against the invading Greek armies and those other Allies like the British who had troops left in Anatolia. The Istanbul government relieved him of his command, thereby acknowledging his threat to them. Kemal resigned his commission and from then on he wore civilian clothes.

And the cry of Nationalists, as Kemal’s supporters were now called, for Turkey’s rights had reached the ears of Winston Churchill in London:

“Loaded with follies, stained with crimes, rotted with misgovernment, shattered by battle, worn down by disastrous wars, his Empire falling to pieces around him, the Turk was still alive. In his breast was beating the heart of a race that had challenged the world and for centuries had contended victoriously against allcomers. In his hands once again was the equipment of a modern army, and at his head a Captain, who with all that is learned of him, ranks with the four or five outstanding figures of the cataclysm. In the tapestried and gilded chambers of Paris were assembled the lawgivers of the world. In Constantinople, under the guns of the Allied fleets, there functioned a puppet government of Turkey. But among the stern hills and valleys of the Turkish homelands in Anatolia, there dwelt that company of poor men … who would not see it settled so; and at the bivouac fires at this moment sat, in the rags of a refugee, the august spirit of Fair Play.”

This “august spirit” was busy arranging his first two Nationalist congresses, first at Erzurum and then at Sivas. These were the forerunners of the present day Turkish Parliament, the Grand National Assembly.

The War of Independence

Meanwhile the Paris Peace Conference concluded in 1920 with the Treaty of Sèvres in which Turkey was to be effectively carved up between the Allies. The Nationalists opposed this at the Paris Conference through their delegates and continued to resist the Greek armies in the west and Armenian armies in the east. At the same time, the Sultan’s government in Istanbul continued to be recognised by Allies, as the Soviets took power in Armenia. So it can be seen how fast events were moving and how confusing and unstable the Anatolian situation had become. In a sense, this instability and fluidity suited Kemal and the Nationalists, and successes against the Greek army began to occur, especially in two great battles at İnönü, from where Kemal’s general İsmet who led the successes was later to take his name.

The Nationalists set up their Grand National Assembly in the dusty town of Ankara right in the heartland of Anatolia, now of course Turkey’s capital city. Mustafa Kemal was the appointed Commander-in-Chief of Turkish Armed Forces with full powers. Donning a uniform again, this time that of a General, he defeated the Greeks at the Battle of Sakarya River, a crucial victory as the Greeks were at the point of pressing on Ankara. Kemal was drawing on his expertise as a Commander, not merely Gallipoli, but also earlier experiences of guerrilla warfare in the Libyan Campaign against the Italians in 1911. He envisaged the adoption of a guerrilla war if all else failed, that is, to make no defence line as such but to use the whole country as a defence area.

After two years of bloody struggle in which the Turkish Nationalists gradually took command of the situation in Anatolia, the Turkish army entered İzmir again on 9th September 1922 as the Greek army evacuated mainland Turkey never to return. Kemal was at the head of the army. The next day a fire destroyed the Greek quarter of the city. Kemal saw it as a fire of retribution. The cause of the fire is still the cause of debate. A new armistice was signed at Mudanya and a new Treaty of Lausanne superseded the Sèvres Treaty and gave the Turks the sovereignty of their homeland and substantially the present boundaries of the Republic of Turkey. It was only with the successful diplomacy of İsmet Pasha, later İsmet İnönü, that Lausanne became the means by which present day Turkey was delineated.

The Turkish Republic and Atatürk’s Reforms

Immediately, Kemal turned his attention to domestic affairs, in the body of the National Assembly. He addressed immediately the question of the Turkey of the future. Even before Lausanne, the Grand National Assembly had abolished the Sultanate and associated with that was the Caliphate, the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world, something that had gone hand in hand with the Sultanate for centuries. The fact that many Turks and other Ottoman subjects were devoutly Muslim made this a very difficult and delicate task indeed. Kemal’s argument was simple but his approach had to be firm though careful:

“For centuries our people have been compelled to act in accordance with this absurd point of view. And what happened? Millions of them died, in every land they went to. Do you know how many Anatolian boys perished in the sweltering heat of the deserts of Yemen? How many men died to keep Syria and Iraq, to stay in Egypt, to cling on to Africa; do you know that? And do you see what good it all did?”

The broad span of cultural, social, and political reforms that Mustafa Kemal set into motion after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 with himself as first President are in fact worthy of a special seminar or conference of their own.

Such an undertaking could well be a most valuable contribution to international, inter-cultural, and inter-communal understanding. It would be a further valuable contribution to the pursuit of world peace if one were to look at the specific policies of Kemal, domestically and internationally that are pacifist in character.

The reforms I refer to constituted Kemal’s approach to the government of a country in the particular conditions that Turkey found itself in in 1923, a country laid waste of manpower, resources, without a real infra-structure of government, and one in need of a transition from a decayed imperialism to a modern developing nation. The approaches and measures taken by Kemal became known collectively as, not surprisingly, Kemalism or Atatürkism.

As I have indicated, the breadth of Kemal’s reforms is too great for full consideration here, pervading as they did all aspects of life in post 1923 Turkey. The major achievements can be summarised. The place of women and their status in the state was officially changed when the Italian Penal Code and Swiss Civil Code were adopted by Turkey in 1926 as a means of finding a short cut to establishing a modern penal and civil code. This meant that, legally speaking, those social and political rights enjoyed by Swiss women then applied to Turkish women. Of course, laws are not necessarily a panacea for all social ills, and in many ways, practically speaking as in many other societies, Turkish women are still in the process of being socially enfranchised. But women did in the early days of the Republic in the 20’s start to enter the professions and tertiary education. Islamic law disabilities were swept away such as polygamy, though this was very infrequent even before the Revolution.

In 1930, women were enfranchised to vote at municipal elections and on the 5th December 1934 political emancipation was completed when women were given the rights to vote for the Parliament and to stand for election themselves. The result of which was that in the February General Election of 1935 seventeen women were elected to the Grand National Assembly out of a total of 339 Deputies.

The Language Reform, incorporating the Alphabet reform, was another major modernisation attempt in 1928. The Latin alphabet, much more suited to writing Turkish than the Arabic, was adopted, and the movement to replacing Arabic and Persian words with Turkish words, where possible, was begun in earnest (not entering the debate here of its effectiveness or desirability). A sequel to this push to westernisation was the 1933 Law that required all Turks to adopt a surname. It was then that Mustafa Kemal became Kemal Atatürk or Kemal Father-Turk. For a detailed summary of all Atatürk’s reforms in clearly explained terms, I recommend Geoffrey Lewis’s book ‘Turkey’.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I can say that what has been achieved after the establishment of The Republic is the laying down of the basis for a prosperous modern society. Frankly though, an examination of Turkey’s progress since the 1950’s shows that the full realisation of this potential is still some way off. There are many reasons for this, too numerous to mention here. But the fundamentals are there, there is an infrastructure, an improving industrial base, improving communications and transportation and a willingness to think ‘modern’ amongst many Turks. There are still, however, problems that stand in the way of total modernisation - some of these are externally induced (I would cite Turkey’s geographical and international political position), some are domestically related, and some are a combination of both (I would cite the problems being faced by the country in relation to its minority groups). Whatever Turkey’s aspirations bring the country to in the decades ahead, I feel that Turkey’s experiences of the past do have a significant part to play in the promotion of international understanding and peace in the world.

The fact that old Diggers and Mehmetchiks embraced each other and dropped tears on the 25th April 1985 at a place called Anzak Köyü, in Turkey, the fact that the words of reconciliation of Kemal Atatürk were unveiled on the same day in a place called The Atatürk Memorial Garden in Canberra, Australia, is an example to people everywhere that the sorrow brought to millions of people by war of any kind and the shortsighted folly of armed conflict is of course a tragedy. As a species we have not yet found a foolproof way of avoiding armed conflict - whether we ever will no one can tell. But two sets of people that were once officially enemies and that have emerged as nations in their own right, as a result of that conflict, can continue to be forces in the human community working towards the peaceful survival of that world community.

I would like to conclude with the words of Australian stretcher-bearer at Gallipoli Charles Bingham who was one of those Anzacs to go back to Gallipoli on 25th April 1985 to attend the re-naming of Anzac Cove. Charles recalls his feelings towards his former enemies after he heard of the death of the former Turkish Consul-General to Sydney, Sarık Arıyak, at the hands of Armenian terrorists in 1980:

“My wife and I met the late Turkish Consul-General for Australia and we had afternoon tea and a couple of social engagements with them and invited them down to the Gallipoli Memorial Club. We have formed a very close association with the Turks, the Turkish Consul and Ambassador, and they attend our annual meetings, and any functions they have, they kindly invite the veterans of the Gallipoli Campaign to them. … As a matter of fact, Mrs Arıyak sent me a lovely little Turkish flag which I now have on my desk.”

References

1. KEMAL KARPAT. Interview for A.B.C. Radio Program Johnny Turk after Gallipoli, 1981.

2. M. KEMAL ATATÜRK. The Speech (Nutuk): Address to the Grand National Assembly, 1927.

3. IMPERIAL DEFENCE COMMITTEE. The Official History of the Great War 1914-1918, 1920-49 (79 Vols).

4. M. KEMAL ATATÜRK. Quotations from series on Atatürk in Magazine ‘Yıllarboyu Tarih’, Istanbul, 1981.

5. GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON. Gallipoli Diary, Edward Arnold, London, 1920.

6. WINSTON CHURCHILL. The World Crisis. Thornton Butterworth, London, 1923 onwards (6 Vols).

7. LEWIS, G. Turkey. Ernest Benn, London, 1965.

8. CHARLES BINGHAM. Interview for A.B.C. Radio Program Johnny Turk After Gallipoli, 1981.