THE LANDSCAPE OF GALLIPOLI: A PIVOTAL GEOGRAPHY

The Gallipoli Peninsula, with its rugged terrain and distinctive topographic features, forms a dramatic natural setting for the meeting of geography, history and archaeology. The peninsula, the straits of the Dardanelles and the Aegean coast have together comprised a strategic landscape for millennia. People have attempted to capture the pivotal geography of this region through myth, literature, history and, of course, cartography. To map a place is to have its measure, to know it and in some sense to own it; to capture its likeness on the page, even if capture of the land depicted proves elusive in reality. Gallipoli features in the earliest geographic texts and documents, from both West and East, in which the settlement and fortification of the region are graphically depicted along with the coastlines and mountainous topography.

On the Late Roman Imperial map known as the Tabula Peutingeriana, mountains line the Gallipoli Peninsula while twin settlements face each other across the entrance to the Dardanelles. By the thirteenth century, the Gallipoli Peninsula appears as a waterway lined with towers rather than mountains, as drawn by a medieval clergyman on the celebrated Hereford mappa mundi in distant England. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman geographer, admiral and cartographer Piri Reis carefully delineated the coastlines of the Dardanelles and peninsula in his Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation). Captain Piri is thought to have been born in the town of Gelibolu, once the most prominent Ottoman naval port, where the Dardanelles open into the Sea of Marmara. His naval charts highlight the small harbours of the Dardanelles and Aegean coast, including Suvla Bay, and depict the twin fortresses of Sultaniye and Kilitbahir guarding the Narrows. Piri Reis begins and ends his cartographic circumnavigation of the Mediterranean at Gallipoli: ‘… starting from the fortresses of Sultaniye and Kilitbahir around Gallipoli, we have described this sea stop by stop and again ended with these fortresses, completing the cycle …’

The strategic location of the Gallipoli Peninsula is augmented by its complex physical geography. The landscape is defined by ridgelines, which also serve to structure military and historical descriptions of the battlefield, from the First Ridge directly above Anzac Cove to the Third Ridge extending between the headland of Gaba Tepe in the south and heights of Chunuk Bair in the north.

Turkish measures to defend the Gallipoli Peninsula and the strategy that was implemented to counter a likely landing operation were above all influenced by the peninsula's physical features. It was necessary to reshape the battlefield from the outset. Troops were deployed according to the likely landing locations. Trenches, artillery, machine gun nests, communication lines, rear-guard connections and other requirements were arranged and shaped according to the topography. Some field works, such as trenches, artillery sites and access routes in the Arı Burnu area, had already been constructed during the Balkan Wars. These were improved and extended after the likelihood of another war emerged. When preparing the area for war in 1915, the Turks were able to take into account advantages the Arı Burnu geography had offered during previous deployments of soldiers there. In that regard, they had the advantage over the Anzac soldiers who would land in the area.

Arı Burnu consists of two capes, namely north and south Arı Burnu, and the slopes of Kocaçimen Tepe (Hill 971), with ridges running parallel to the coast towards Gaba Tepe in the south. Arı Burnu was considered an important location within the Gaba Tepe landing zone. The coast near Gaba Tepe was the most appropriate location for landing the heaviest war vehicles, providing an obstacle-free disembarkation point and route. The Anzacs’ initial objective was to seize and hold Artillery Ridge (Topçular Sırtı) from Hill 971 to Gaba Tepe. But it was necessary to hold Arı Burnu, a natural fortification that dominated the Gaba Tepe coast and plain, to ensure safe landings. While Gaba Tepe was suitable for a landing, the Arı Burnu coast was steep and rugged, and inappropriate for disembarking, then operating heavy vehicles. It was impossible to land soldiers on the Gaba Tepe coast without first securing the Arı Burnu area. Prominent and effective natural defences dominated the land up to the strait and the sea. The Nara Cape and Mecidiye and Hamidiye strongholds were among the strategic locations that enabled long-range artillery (firing to 9000–13 000m) to enfilade the coastal area from the flanks and rear.

The deployment sites were on Conkbayırı Hill in the foothills of Kocaçimen Tepe and at points on the ridge that extends from Conkbayırı (Chunuk Bair) to Gaba Tepe, including Suyatağı, Kemalyeri, Göktepe and Kavaktepe.

We live in a world of material things. Objects that we have manufactured (artefacts) and structures that we have built envelope our daily existence. They constitute the tangible and tactile expressions of our contemporary society, as they did for all past human communities. As such, artefacts reveal much about our thoughts and our actions. They inform on our preferences and purchasing power, our cultural affiliations and travels, and our stage of life and gender. In other words, artefacts have the potential to group people with something in common. Artefacts fill museums around the world, and together with standing monuments, they form a major component of the public face of archaeology. The rationale behind the study of artefacts in archaeology, then, can be easily understood. As objects made and used by people, they play a central role in a discipline that is concerned with material culture and how it can be utilised to make sense of human behaviour and achievements.

How far we can approach the ‘true’ meaning of material culture has been much debated, and need not detain us here. Suffice to say that, as evidence from the past, objects are worthy of study in themselves. For many, though, artefacts are seen as ‘fossils’: static and mute expressions of past actions, which are often displayed in serried ranks in a museum. This method is of limited value, for it obscures the cultural biography of an archaeological object, which has its own history of creation, use, deposition, post-deposition and recovery. We explained our project's recovery system in chapter 5. Here we touch on the first three stages of the lifecycle of the JHAS artefacts, although not with the same level of attention.

Whether set in remote antiquity or the modern world, battles and battlefields are generally perceived as the purview of military historians. Although broad themes such as the causes of war form a crucial element of military history, specific campaigns have often been investigated from the perspectives of strategy, logistics, tactics and manoeuvres of opposing armies. These mechanical and operational categories continue to attract attention, to be sure, but over the last quarter century or so the study of armed conflict has seen a significant shift of emphasis. Interdisciplinary approaches to an anthropological archaeology of modern conflict have developed, in which the study of human nature under the duress of battle – why soldiers behave the way they do and how their behaviour relates to their physical environment – is now considered of prime importance. Archaeological approaches and analyses have found an important role to play in these investigations, through the archaeologists’ attention to the physical record of human activity. Research concentrates on identifying the material remains of battlefields in which people not only fought and died but also lived for days, weeks or months at a time, building kitchens, sleeping quarters, medical posts, supply depots and all those related features that make up the landscape of warfare behind the front lines. Using material culture to understand the way people behaved during battles is the contribution archaeology makes to the study of battlefields and conflict more generally.

This emphasis on the materiality of war, especially modern technological conflict like the First World War, is a relatively new advance. Accordingly, objects of war are not necessarily viewed as functional items but as possessing their own ‘social lives’, whose biographies have yet to be written fully. Likewise the contested and tragic landscapes of destruction are multilayered places of commemoration and pilgrimage, as well as tourist attractions and sites that require heritage management. This broad anthropological approach, sometimes called ‘agency theory’, owing to the explicit emphasis it places on the human agent, has emerged as a powerful tool in the rapidly expanding discipline of battlefield archaeology, or, to use the more inclusive term, conflict archaeology. The underlying principle is that each military site, whether the scene of a protracted campaign or a brief encounter, has a distinct ‘fingerprint’, which was formed by the pressures of war, changing technology and the cultural backgrounds of the combatants.

After five years of field surveys, commencing in 2010, the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey (JHAS) of the Anzac battlefield has now completed its work. This book is one product of the work that was done. The JHAS was the first systematic attempt in recent times to chart and record some of what has not weathered and eroded away of the Anzac battlefield a century after the fighting there ceased.

The only other archaeological survey conducted before the JHAS was that which accompanied the Gallipoli Peninsula Peace Park project. In the Foreword to the two-volume publication, the culmination of an international competition compiled by Raci Bademli, Suleyman Demirel, the then Turkish president, noted: ‘The Republic of Turkey, wishing to keep these legendary battles fresh in the memory of the future generations and to show that no war is cause for permanent hostilities, but can serve as a basis for friendships as well, has made the decision to turn the Battlefield of Gallipoli into a Memorial for World Peace.’

Since the 1915 campaign Turkey, Australia and New Zealand have been certainly drawn closer together with an increased mutual respect and understanding. Even so, and despite the immense value of the Peace Park publication, the fine-grained archaeological analysis of the Anzac battlefield had yet to be undertaken.

The Anzac site also has a history beyond the conflict itself. That story embraces the manner in which Turkey, Australia and New Zealand have woven different narratives of historical meaning and national symbolism around the experiences of their soldiers in that small area in 1915. The Ottoman Empire's virtual collapse in late 1918 initially allowed the Allies to place their interpretation of events, virtually unchallenged, on the old battlefields of Gallipoli. The creation of the ‘Anzac area’ meant that here was a part of Turkey that was not quite Turkey – sacred ground somewhat beyond that nation's full control, dedicated to the memory of the Allied dead who lay in its soil, both the missing and those with identified graves. With a couple of exceptions, Ottoman memorials marking their successful expulsion of the Allied armies at Anzac were destroyed.

For Ottoman Army Second Lieutenant Muharrem Efendi, the battle to defend his homeland began shortly before 4.30am on 25 April 1915. A platoon commander in the 2nd Battalion of the 27th Regiment, he was waiting with 60 of his men in a trench on the high ground just above Arı Burnu point, a few kilometres north of Gaba Tepe. Peering into the darkness, he was startled to discern boats being pulled by steamboats approaching the point. His men immediately opened fire, only to be swept by return fire from a machine gun in one of the steamboats. Muharrem Efendi fell wounded and was forced to seek medical help, sustaining another wound on the way.

Once their boats were grounded, the invaders, Australians of the Australian Imperial Force's 9th Battalion, rushed up the slope. They overran the trench and headed up the slope onto the plateau above. Most of Efendi's men died, either in the trench or on the slopes above as they sought to retreat. A quarter of an hour after the first boats were grounded, another batch arrived, going ashore just north of the point. These men, under fire from Efendi's compatriots to the north, also pushed up the steep slope above them and headed inland.

This clash represented the first shots of a battle that would last eight months and would have a profound impact on all participants – and on the national identities of three countries in particular.

ORIGINS OF THE GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN

The Gallipoli campaign had its roots in the Ottoman Empire's decision to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers and the belief in London and Paris that this decision was not wholehearted. When the war erupted in early August 1914, the Ottoman Empire faced a momentous choice: to enter the war or stand aside. A sense of insecurity underlay the approach of those who directed the empire's affairs in Constantinople. Conscious of longstanding Russian, British and French designs on imperial territory – the British were already in possession of Egypt – the Ottomans saw in Germany a source of support and protection.

The Turkish cemeteries at Gallipoli developed in a different manner from those of the Anzacs, and the ceremonies mirrored marked shifts in public opinion and the political circumstances of the time. In this chapter, we first discuss how Turkish commemoration ceremonies have evolved over the last century, after which we examine the monuments themselves.

18 MARCH NAVAL VICTORY COMMEMORATIONS AND VISITS TO THE CEMETERIES

Ceremonies held during the war period

The Ottoman victory at Gallipoli (Çanakkale Muzafferiyet-i Azimesi) was acclaimed throughout the empire and beyond. Celebratory gatherings and ceremonies were held across the empire, and especially in Istanbul. Caliph-Sultan Mehmet Reşat received the title Gazi (Veteran) to mark the victory, while the German Kaiser decorated the Çanakkale Fortified Zone Commander, Cevat Pasha. For his part, Cevat, anxious to proclaim the heroism of the gunners in the naval victory of 18 March 1915, obtained the approval of the Ottoman Supreme Command to rename the Dardanos Battery the Hasan-Mevsuf Battery in recognition of the bravery of the gunners Hasan, Mevsuf Bey and their friends.

The first commemoration of the 18 March victory in the Dardanelles was held one year on. On 12 March 1916, Nihat Pasha, commander of the Çanakkale Fortified Zone, issued an order for a military ceremony to take place on the anniversary of the naval victory ‘to cherish the memory of the soldiers who fell on that date’. This military ceremony and a parade would follow a religious ceremony. The Ottoman warship Yavuz came from Istanbul for the ceremonies, which were held in the Hastane Bayırı, Anadolu Hamidiye, Dardanos Bastion and Erenköy–Seddülbahir areas and were attended by Nihat Pasha, accompanied by Merten Pasha and Cevat Pasha. A German officer made the following statement during this first commemoration:

The Anzac Gallipoli Archaeological Database is a unique and detailed record of the information recovered during the JHAS field project. Its value is the documentation of archaeological contexts, thereby enabling features and artefacts to be studied in association. During the project, information was collated and managed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) and research database that includes searchable attributes about each feature and artefact. One outcome of the JHAS has been to make this database available to other researchers and the general public as a web-based, digital archive – the Anzac Gallipoli Archaeological Database (AGAD; <www.arts.unimelb.edu.au/gallipoli-battlefield>) – which is comprehensive in its content. It is an important and complementary resource for this book, as many of the features and artefacts that could not be included or illustrated in the text can be found online in AGAD.

AGAD occupies a unique space among the increasing number of digital archaeological gazetteers, archives and catalogues on web-based platforms that are being constructed as an effective way of making primary data available to a wide audience. With more than 2000 records precisely documented in the field, it aims to assist the study of the First World War through its emphasis on landscape and artefacts. The database is organised around the features and artefacts documented in the GIS, rather than specific sites or locations. The feature entries are of the various types used during the JHAS surveys (see table A.1). Each feature is given a unique Feature ID (and artefacts have an additional catalogue ‘Artefact Number’). Moreover, each feature has a record that displays data attributes, including a description, dimensions, chronological period, location and find-spot information, survey date, associated features, artefact type, material type, preservation rating and between one and three images, such as photographs and maps. Artefacts form a major portion of the archive, as they are the largest group of features recorded, and a separate set of artefact types is identified in the data set. It includes information documented in both Turkish and Anzac-held areas of the battlefield, providing an insight into the battlefield from perspectives on both sides of the conflict.

Feature types have been categorised from observations in the field. Eleven feature types are c. 1915 battlefield features (artefacts, boats, six types of earthworks, graves, roads, structures).

This book deals with the transformation of the Anzac landscape at Gallipoli. We seek to explain how a rugged piece of land, remote and overlooking the Aegean Sea, was quickly and dramatically turned into a scene of intense conflict on 25 April 1915. Within eight months Allied and Ottoman forces changed this land, which is actually quite small in size, into a battleground, scarring it with a complex labyrinth of military earthworks. Then, a few years after the conflict ceased, silence descended upon it once more. Gallipoli entered its third stage of development, as a cemetery – the last resting place for thousands of soldiers who lie buried within its soil.

In terms of preservation, no other First World War battlefield can match Anzac. Whether trenches or tunnels, dugouts or terraces, much of the Anzac battlefield still survives beneath a canopy of vegetation. Battered by cold northerly winds in winter, which often bring with them copious quantities of rain, this coastal fringe and its hinterland have suffered much erosion over the last hundred years, as any comparison with photographs will show. Even so, this fragile site endures. Despite the fact that more than one million people visit the battleground each year as tourists and pilgrims, there is as yet little ‘development’ in the modern sense of that word. Reference to other coastal locations in the west of Turkey, such as Bodrum, reminds us just how well preserved the battlefields actually are. You can stand at Lone Pine today looking south towards Cape Helles and scarcely see a building or structure of any kind.

Violence and aggression extend back to the very roots of humanity. Long before any written records, prehistoric warfare conducted by stateless societies has been attested many times over by archaeologists working in every corner of our planet. Five thousand years ago, when writing was invented, conflict became a continuous feature of literature and religion. Yet, in all instances of conflict before the First World War, the scope was localised, even if the motives and the trauma it caused victims still resonate in today's hostilities. The First World War was something quite different. It ushered in war that was both global in scale and industrial in its operations.

By the end of the first day of the landing the Anzacs held a tenuous defensive perimeter, encompassing just 6km2. On the edge of what was ‘only a cheese-bite out of the cliffs’, according to New Zealand and Australian Division commander Sir Alexander Godley, the invaders had clung on to intermittent positions as Ottoman pressure forced them back during the afternoon of the 25th. If the events of that day set the limits of the ‘Old Anzac’ battlefield – as compared with the larger area held after the August offensive – the unrelenting efforts of men on both sides of the line would shape it in the next two months. In the prevailing siege-like conditions, most of the garrison contributed to the process of forming the battlefield. But one group in particular – the Australian and New Zealand field engineers – played a key role, providing the direction of much infantry effort and often the labour needed to create the essential defences and facilities.

The focus of this chapter will be less on the course of the fighting at Anzac than on the setting of the struggle: the landscape of siege warfare in this particular section of the Gallipoli battlefield. Although the battles fought here have been described and analysed in great detail, both in the official histories published by Australia and New Zealand shortly after the end of the First World War and in numerous more recent works, less attention has been given to the physical context of the struggle. The sappers’ efforts in creating the trench and tunnel defence systems that made possible prolonged resistance to the Ottomans in such unpropitious circumstances, although never entirely ignored, have generally been relegated to the back stage. In this context it has also been all but forgotten that the ordinary infantryman in the AIF or NZEF spent far more of his time at Anzac digging and improving the trench system than he did in fighting the enemy.

The Old Anzac battlefield began, at its southern extremity, at positions on the ridge immediately above the beach. Stretching north from Chatham's Post for nearly 2.5km, it followed the edge of a spur of the dominating Sari Bair Range.