- Title: TURKEY-GALLIPOLI/CEREMONY Ceremony held for August offensive of Anzac landings
- Date: 6th August 2015
- Summary: GALLIPOLI, TURKEY (AUGUST 6, 2015) (REUTERS) VIEW OF AUSTRALIAN MEMORIAL SITE AUSTRALIAN FLAG AT MEMORIAL SITE PEOPLE SEATED
- Embargoed: 21st August 2015 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Turkey
- Country: Turkey
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA5KEWGGSNE4PXLHMX08KVJMVA0
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Australian Governor-General Peter Cosgrove and his wife Lynne Cosgrove attended a commemorational ceremony at Lone Pine on Thursday (August 6) in Gallipoli Peninsula marking the August offensive of the 100th anniversary of World War One battle that helped shape the birth of new nations.
The Gallipoli campaign has resonated through generations that have mourned the thousands of soldiers from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) cut down by machine gun and artillery fire as they struggled ashore on a narrow beach.
Cosgrove said Anzacs succeeded in standing in solidarity despite the plight of war.
"Armies and indeed communities under such severe stresses can often fragment, dissolve into an every man for himself pattern of behaviour. Not the Anzacs. The great battles of August 1915 here at Lone Pine and elsewhere on Gallipoli battlefields were for the senior commanders the last throw of the dice," he said.
A century ago, thousands of soldiers from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) struggled ashore on a narrow beach at Gallipoli during an ill-fated campaign that would claim more than 130,000 lives.
The area has become a site of pilgrimage for visitors who honour their nations' fallen in graveyards halfway around the world on ANZAC Day every April 25.
This year the centenary saw the largest ever commemoration, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Britain's Prince Charles leading the ceremonies.
Although the Allied forces also included British, Irish, French, Indians, Gurkhas and Canadians, Gallipoli has become particularly associated with the Australians and New Zealanders, marking a point where they came of age as nations less beholden to Britain.
By the time allied forces withdrew, defeated, after eight months, the fighting would eventually claim more than 130,000 lives, 87,000 of them on the side of the Ottoman Turks, who were allied with imperial Germany.
For Turkey, Gallipoli is also a national touchstone, heralding the rise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who as a young officer led the defense. He later founded modern Turkey, the secular republic that emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman empire. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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