Essay On The Gallipoli Campaign

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An eight month battle of the British Empire and France against the Ottoman Empire resulted in the Gallipoli Campaign. This Campaign began in April 1915, the same time World War 1 was taking place. The British and French began a naval campaign to force a passage through a narrow area located in northwestern Turkey, known as Dardanelles, because they wanted to secure a sea route to Russia. This plan failed and the Ottoman Empire was prepared for what was to come. The failure of the Allied naval and land operations were essential factors in the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli.
World War I was a mainland war that took place on the Western Front. Allied powers consisted of the British Empire, France, Italy and Russia. The Central powers consisted of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and four months after the war started the neutral Ottoman Empire joined. At first Turkey was not a nation state but the remains of the Ottoman Empire (Hart 2). Its population consisted of ethnic Turks, Greeks, Arabs, Slavs, and more. The Ottoman Empire, led by Sultan Abdul Hamid, had a struggling government with a weak political system and military defeat. In 1908, a split group of protesters and young army officers and civil servants were known as ‘Young Turks.’ The Young Turks had the common desire to improve the Ottoman Empire to turn around its declining government (Hart 3). It was hard for the government to become more modernized without surrendering control to different foreign powers. In fact, in 1911 Italy attacked Turkey and seized both the Tripolitania and Dodecanese Islands and it was obvious France desired to get Syria. Europe wanted almost every part of the empire that was left. With the Turkish being so weak, it led to the First Balkan War...

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...ta, Odessa, and Novorossiysk (Hart 13). The attacks provoked Russia to declare war on Turkey on November 2nd, 1914. The British reacted quickly to the declaration of war and Winston Churchill ordered the British navy to strike at the Turks forts at the entering of the Dardanelles. The next day the British battle ships, attacked the European forts and the French battle ships, bombed the Asiatic forts at the Dardanelles entrance.
January 7th and 8th, the British War Council confirmed that they would fight side by side with the French on the Western Front. At first, they intended to have substitute plans if the French could not advance any further on the Western Front or if they no longer needed Britain’s support. Churchill’s plans were “to invade and take the Gallipoli Peninsula, with Istanbul as its objective” and have it take place in February 1915 (Hart 16).

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