General William Birdwood

The campaign began with a failed naval attack by British and French ships on the Dardanelles Straits in February-March 1915 and continued with a major land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25, involving British and French troops as well as divisions of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).

25 April 1915

Winston Churchill

The Gallipoli campaign was a terrible tragedy. The attempt by the Allies to seize the Gallipoli peninsula from the Ottoman empire and gain control over the strategically-important Dardanelles failed in a welter of hubris, blood and suffering. But for all that the campaign was an utter failure.

At dawn on 25 April 1915, Allied troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey. The Gallipoli campaign was the land-based element of a strategy intended to allow Allied ships to pass through the Dardanelles, capture Constantinople (now Istanbul) and ultimately knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war.

The events of 1915 created the Anzac legend, arguably the central national founding myth for Australia. For Turkey the defeat of foreign invasion under the charismatic command of Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic) gave Gallipoli mythic status within Turkey’s national identity.

8 months

620 Australians

10 months, 3 weeks and 2 days

For eight long months, New Zealand troops, alongside those from Australia, Great Britain and Ireland, France, India, and Newfoundland battled harsh conditions and Ottoman forces desperately fighting to protect their homeland.

Russia

The Gallipoli campaign helped New Zealand establish closer ties to other countries within the British Empire, both its coloniser British and other colonised country like Australia.