Gallipoli is a peninsula in Turkey that strangely enough is very beautiful although it has been fought over in many different wars. During WW1 this part of the world was very important. But it was also fought over in the Crimean war, the Balkan war, and the Ottoman conquest.
Gallipoli was an important area of Turkey during the so called Dardanel campaign, one of. The most famous battle took place during WW1. The Allies attacked the Ottomans because they needed a way to get to Russia to deliver weapons by sea (that wasn’t blocked off by ice). They also wanted to defeat and get control of what is now Turkey because of Turkey’s allegiance with the Germans.
The very first attack was a fleet of ships that shot at the fortresses along the Dardanelle strait. This plan worked well until the ships hit a huge amount of mines and had to turn back. They then tried a simultaneous attack, with British and French attacking one side of the peninsula and the New Zealanders and Australians (who were also with the Allies in this war) on the other. The idea was to meet up and capture that area of land.
There is a day known as ANZAC day on the 25th of April which remembers the Australians and New Zealanders who were killed here in the war. From the Allies, 36,000 men were lost and from the Turkish side 87,000 soldiers died. Unbelievably, the Ottomans won the fight over Gallipoli in spite of being an empire in decline. The Ottomans won because of their defense strategies and huge army.
By: Hamish