Turkey’s ambassador to South Africa, Kaan Esener, in a short speech to the diplomats and other guests assembled at the ambassadorial residence in Pretoria, quoted the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, later titled “Atatürk” (Father of the Turks), speaking of his former enemies:
”Those heroes that shed their blood, and lost their lives are now lying in a friendly country, therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnies and the Mehmets to us, where they lie side by side, here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosom and are at peace after having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.”
Considering precisely what the Entente Powers were planning to do to Turkey, this is a very enlightened and humane thing to say!
The Gallipoli Campaign was aimed not only at knocking Turkey out of the war, but also at destroying the country. This happened in the case of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and almost succeeded with Germany. The fate that befell all peoples over whom the Western Allies decided was disastrous, for example in Israel/Palestine, Yugoslavia or Iraq/Syria.
The Entente plan was to send a naval force through the Canakkale Straight (referred to variously as the Dardanelles or Bosphorus) into the Sea of Marmara and on to the Ottoman Turkish capital, Istanbul (or Constantinople). This would allow them control of the Turkish capital, most of its industry and give them a direct naval link to Russia on the Black Sea.
The Turks had laid 10 lines of naval mines to prevent the Entente navies going through the narrows, but on the night of the 17th, when the Ottoman minelayer Nusret laid another line of mines. The combination of mines and fire from canons on the shore caused Britain to lose the battleships HMS Irresistable and Ocean. France lost the Bouvet and three more ships were damaged.
Wikipedia calls the naval battle of Canakkale (Dardanelles) a ”significant victory for the Ottoman Empire.” Ambassador Esener explained that from the Ottoman Turkish point of view, they were under pressure from many sides,with uprisings on the Balkans, in the Caucasus and elsewhere, he said: ”This was an empire that was maybe on it’s last days. I think we lost… six, seven million people.” In the context of a crumbling empire, he said the victory at sea, and later the succesful repulse of the Entente landings at Gallipoli, gave the Turkish people hope.
He also recounted how this battle had touched his family. He described with pride how his great-grandfather had first fought in the Balkans, returned home for such a brief time that he had not unpacked his bags, and then been sent to Canakkale. He never came back.
Meanwhile, Britain and France were working on a plan to ”partition” Turkey, in which very little of the Turkish-speaking lands would be self-governing and which would have created yet another zone of instability added to where they meddled elsewhere. The eventual Entente plan for Turkish partition, the Sykes-Picot Plan, left very little land for the Turks.
The main reason these Allied or Entente plans failed was they were based on the imperial principle, that is, decisions made over the heads of the people by British and French Empires. No democratic expressions of the will of the people were allowed, that was the key to their policy.
By way of contrast, Kemal Atatürk was a reformer who introduced secular parliamentary government, gave rights to women and relied on ”people power” after WWI to defeat the Great Powers and force an acceptable peace in 1923. Turkey’s borders have remained the same since, something that can’t be said for those drawn by the Entente.
Considering the fate that awaited his people if the British and French Empires won, Atatürk’s response to their invasion is both surprising and enlightened indeed.
