Narrow peninsula extending SW from the coast of Istanbul province, NW Turkey; between the Dardanelles (SE) and the Aegean Sea (W); length c.100 km/60 mi; the scene of fierce fighting in 191516.
Gallipoli peninsula (Turkish: Gelibolu Yarımadası, Greek: Καλλίπολις/Kallipolis) is located in Turkish Thrace, the European part of Turkey, 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.
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. Gallipoli (in Turkish, Gelibolu) was made the chief town of a Kaymakamlik (district) in the vilayet (a 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.
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 its troubled ally in the east, Imperial Russia, decided to try to obtain passage to the east.
Battle of Gallipoli
In Australia, New Zealand, South Africa 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. On April 25, 1915, as part of an allied force of British and French troops, Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at a small bay at the western end of the Peninsula (today officially called Anzac Cove).
ANZAC forces evacuated on December 19, 1915 and the other elements of the invasion force a little later.
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.
The Gallipoli campaign also gave an important boost to the career of Mustafa Kemal, who was at that time a little-known army commander but later was promoted to Pasha.
ANZAC Day
On April 25, 2005, to mark the 90th 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. Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark were also in attendance, and Clark was accompanied by the official NZ defence force party, veterans of several past wars and 10 New Zealand college students who won the New Zealand 'Prime Minister's Essay Competition' with their works about Gallipoli. Attendance at the ANZAC Day dawn service at Gallipoli has become popular since the 75th anniversary.
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. 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.
The BBC produced a television series, All the King's Men, (not to be confused with the novel of the same name by Robert Penn Warren), that focused attention on a regiment (the "Sandringham Company") that was decimated at Gallipoli and which was composed of men who were servants at King George V's estate in Sandringham, Norfolk.
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.
Ecclesiastical history
Callipolis remains a Roman Catholic titular bishopric in the former Roman province of Thrace.
Sources and references
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This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia, so may be out of date, or reflect the point of view of the Catholic Church as of 1913.
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