Turkey Memorializes Gallipoli to Ease Entry into European Union

(August 3, 2002)

Recently, former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the head of a European Commission on the future of Europe, stated his firm opposition to Turkish membership in the European Union. That’s too bad because Turkey has taken a number of steps to qualify for membership in the EU. Over the past few years Turkey abolished the death penalty, allowed the teaching of non-Turkish languages in school and even allowed limited instruction in Kurdish. And, as I discovered on a recent tour of Turkey, the government has even provided an interpretation of Turkish history which tries desperately to confirm its status as a western power.

For western, and particularly Commonwealth visitors, one of the most famous tourist sites in Turkey lies near the beach of Gallipoli, on the strait of the Dardanelles separating Europe from Asia. It was there in 1915 that Anzac troops landed, were fought to a draw by Turkish troops who stopped their advance a few hundred yards from the beach and then forced the Aussies and New Zealanders to withdraw in December 1915.

The Anzac defeat at Gallipoli in World War I is still marked with solemn ceremonies in New Zealand and Australia while for the Turks, it is remembered as one of their only victories over Allied troops during the First World War.

Today, the Turkish government has turned the battlefield into a national park which has rebuilt some of the trenches and erected enormous monuments commemorating the battle. But there is more to Gallipoli than evocations of a fierce battle in a long-ago war, for the Turkish authorities have memorialized Gallipoli with an eye to their long-standing attempt to be recognized as a European rather than an Asian or Middle Eastern nation.

Our guide told us, for example, that the soldiers on both sides respected each other, the Anzacs holding that “Johnny Turk” was a fierce but fair opponent, while the Turks held the Anzacs in similar esteem. Both sides, she said, would exchange presents across the trenches: the Anzacs throwing tobacco to the Turks, the Turks throwing candies to the Australians and New Zealanders. Out of respect for the other side, the Anzacs would not attack when the Turks were praying. These actions caused some consternation amongst the officers on both sides, but the soldiers themselves insisted on maintaining these exchanges and restrictions.

We were then taken to see some of the monuments on the site Near the beach is a large stone engraved with a message from Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, to the mothers of the Anzac forces. Ataturk was a commander at Gallipoli, and it was there that he demonstrated both his courage and his military skills. Ataturk’s words, inscribed on the monument, tells the Australian and New Zealand mothers not to mourn their dead sons who rest on Turkish soil because they will be cared for as if they were sons of Turkey itself.

Not far from the beach is an enormous statue of a Turkish soldier carrying a wounded New Zealander to safety. And not far from that is another enormous statue depicting the last Turkish survivor of Gallipoli as an old man with his arm around a young girl. The old man symbolizes the old Turkey passing on the memory and heritage of Gallipoli to the younger generation, but it is a generation where little girls dress in western-style pinafores, just like their European counterparts.

The Gallipoli battle scene is intended to counter a longstanding Western image which sees Turkey through the lens of the old Ottoman Empire, as cruel, sadistic and even perverted nation, one which was rife with corruption, inefficiency and immorality. In its place we are presented with a western-style Turkey whose army in World War I behaved just like their western counterparts. The Gallipoli battle, we are led to believe, was between two western powers; it was a battle in which the soldiers on both sides not only respected each other’s martial qualities, but their different religions as well.

Atakturk’s poem and the statute of the Turk carrying the wounded soldier construct a myth of battle where the fighting was limited by western rules of warfare that barred mistreatment of prisoners. And although the Gallipoli national park does not trumpet nor glorify the Turkish victory, it still conveys the message that the Turks were modern enough, efficient enough to confront and then defeat a western army. Finally, there is nothing at Gallipoli to show that in 1915, Turkey was a Moslem country.

Whether or not Turkey ever gains access to the EU remains to be seen. A lot still has to be done to conform to the EU’s requirements--torture has to be abolished, for example, and the army has to agree to stay out of politics. But from the evidence of the Gallipoli site on the shores of Asia and across from Europe, there can be little doubt that about which side of the Dardanelles Turkey’s leaders want to call home. ٱ

© Harvey G. Simmons, 2003