In the early hours of April 25, 1915, British, French, Australian, and New Zealand troops landed on the rugged shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula, hoping to seize the Dardanelles and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. Fierce Ottoman resistance, led in part by a then-obscure colonel named Mustafa Kemal, pinned the invaders to narrow, blood-soaked beachheads for eight brutal months.
The plan, championed by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was audacious: force the Dardanelles Strait, capture Constantinople, and open a supply route to Russia while collapsing Ottoman resistance. Instead, the landings at Anzac Cove and Cape Helles turned into a grinding stalemate against cliffs and gullies that gave defenders every advantage.
Australian and New Zealand troops, many experiencing combat for the first time, scrambled up steep, scrub-covered slopes under withering fire from Ottoman positions above. Casualties mounted horrifically on both sides over the following months, and the campaign was ultimately abandoned in early 1916 with the Allies withdrawing in defeat. Yet the battle became a founding myth for Australian and New Zealand national identity, commemorated every year on April 25 as ANZAC Day, a solemn public holiday marked by dawn services at war memorials and at Gallipoli itself.
For Turkey, the successful defense elevated Mustafa Kemal, who would later take the name Atatürk and found the modern Turkish republic, into a national hero.
Key people: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, William Birdwood