Gallipoli

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Gallipoli :: Gallipolis

''For other uses, see Gallipoli (disambiguation) Gallipoli, called Gelibolu in modern Turkish, (Greek: Καλλίπολις), is a town in northwestern Turkey. The name derives from the Greek Kallipolis, meaning "Beautiful City". It is located on the Gallipoli Peninsula (Gelibolu Yarımadası), with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east.

History

Antiquity, Byzantium and crusaders

Kallipolis, or in Latin Callipolis, was a city in the southern part of the Thracian Chersonese ("Chersonesus Thracica" in Latin, now known as the Gallipoli Peninsula), on the right shore, and at the entrance of the Dardanelles.

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I fortified it and established there important military warehouses for corn and wine.

In 1304 it became the centre of that strange crusader state created by the Almugavares, or Catalonian routiers, who burned it in 1307, before retiring to Cassandria.

Ottoman era

After the devastating 1357 earthquake the Greek city was almost abandoned, but swiftly reoccupied by Turks from Anatolia, the Asiatic side of the straits, making Gallipoli the first Ottoman possession in Europe, and the staging area for their expansion across the Balkans.

The peninsula which was inhabited by populations of the Byzantine Empire was gradually conquered by the Ottoman Empire starting from 13th century onwards until the 15th. The Greeks living there were allowed to continue their everyday life. Gallipoli (in Turkish, Guelibolou) made was the chief town of a Kaïmakamlik (district) in the vilayet (Wali's province) of Adrianople, with about 30,000 inhabitants, Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.

Gallipoli became a major encampment for British and French forces in 1854 during the Crimean War, and the harbour was also a stopping-off point on the way to Constantinople. [http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/usher/despatch.html

The peninsula did not see any more wars up until World War I when the British Empire allies trying to find a way to reach their troubled ally in the east, Imperial Russia, decided to try to obtain passage to the east. The Ottomans set up defensive fortifications along the peninsula with German help.

Battle of Gallipoli

In Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland, Gallipoli is the name given to the Allied Campaign on the peninsula during World War I, usually known in Britain as the Dardanelles Campaign and in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale. This was an attempt to push through the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople (now Istanbul). On April 25, 1915, as part of an allied force of British and French troops, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at a small bay at the western end of the Peninsula (today officially called Anzac Cove). The campaign was relatively successful for the Turks and the Germans and a catastrophe for Russia which eventually would lead to civil war partly due to this unsuccessful campaign. The ANZACs evacuated on December 19, 1915 and the other elements of the invasion force a little later. There were around 180,000 Allied casualties and 220,000 Turkish casualties. This campaign has become a "founding myth" for both Australia and New Zealand, and Anzac Day is still commemorated as a holiday in both countries. In fact, it is one of those rare battles that both sides seem to remember fondly, as the Turks consider it a great turning point for their (future) nation as well.

Many mementos of the Gallipoli campaign can be seen in the museum at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia, and at the Auckland War Memorial Museum in Auckland, New Zealand. This campaign also put a dent in the armour of Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, who had commissioned the plans to invade the Dardanelles. He talks about this campaign vividly in his memoirs. A small artillery detachment was sent by Greece to aid the battle, led by Antonios Georgiadis (in some accounts Antonios Pispas, as he later changed his surname).

The Gallipoli campaign also gave an important boost to the career of Mustafa Kemal, who was at that time a little-known army commander. Kemal exceeded his authority and contravened orders in order to halt the Allied advance and eventually drive them back. He went on to found the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

ANZAC Day

On April 25, 1990, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, government officials from Australia and New Zealand, most of the last surviving Gallipoli veterans, and many Australian and New Zealand tourists travelled to Turkey for a special dawn service at Gallipoli. Attendance at the ANZAC Day dawn service at Gallipoli has since become popular. Upwards of 10,000 people have attended services in Gallipoli.

Until 1999 the Gallipoli dawn service was held at the Ari Burnu war cemetery at Anzac Cove, but the growing numbers of people attending resulted in the construction of a more spacious site on North Beach, known as the "Anzac Commemorative Site".

Influence on the arts

The Battle of Gallipoli is the subject of a 1981 movie, entitled Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson. The film has been criticised for portraying the campaign as a mainly Australian one. In fact twice as many British troops died at Gallipoli as ANZACs. Eric Bogle wrote in 1972 his famous And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda after having watched in Australia a parade of elderly veterans of the Gallipoli campaign. Versions of this song were later recorded by June Tabor and The Pogues separately.

The campaign is also the subject of a 2005 documentary, also named Gallipoli, by the Turkish filmmaker Tolga Örnek, showing the bravery and the suffering on both sides through the use of surviving diaries and letters of the soldiers. For this film he has been awarded an honorary medal in the general division of the Order of Australia.^*

Ecclesiastical history

A titular see of Thrace, now called Gallipoli. Callipolis was a bishopric depending on Heracleia. Lequien (I, 1123) mentions only six Greek bishops, the first as being present at Ephesus in 431, when the see was united to that of Coela (Coelia or Coele), the last about 1500. His list could easily be increased, for the Greek Orthodox see still exists; it was raised in 1904 to the rank of a metropolis, without suffragans, after the manner of most Greek metropolitan sees. Lequien (III, 971) also gives the names of eight Latin bishops, from 1208 to 1518. (See Eubel, I, 269, note.) There are numerous schools and a small museum; a large cemetery is the resting place of many French soldiers who died of disease (chiefly cholera) during the Crimean War. The port is bad and trade unimportant, for want of roads. A Catholic mission was conducted in the Ottoman days by Assumpionist Fathers; there are also a number of Armenian and Greek Catholics, with priests of their respective rites.

Sources and references

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Cities in Turkey | Battle of Gallipoli

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