Gallipoli drained Turkish resources

Hal Colebatch
November 03, 2008
PAUL Keating's comments on Gallipoli can be dismissed as the outpourings of a chronically disaffected and embittered man cherishing some kind of private ancestral grudge. Kevin Rudd is right to disassociate himself, and Australians, from Keating's remarks.

Somehow I am reminded of the stage Irishman whose version of history included the complaint: "Shure, didn't the English hang my grandfather, and him only four years old!" No one, as far as I know, has ever said, as Keating claims, that Gallipoli redeemed Australia. I am unaware that anyone has thought it needed redeeming.

What Gallipoli did was prove, for the first time, the courage and fighting abilities of the Australian soldier in extraordinarily difficult conditions of both attack and defence over several months. It laid the foundations of Australia's military tradition: had the Australian forces performed less bravely, Australia's subsequent history, including its contribution to the fight against Nazism and Japanese aggression, may well have been different and less admirable and fortunate.
However, there is another point about Gallipoli's place in history that is relevant but which, to the best of my knowledge, has never been raised: although it is taken for granted by almost everyone that Gallipoli was a total defeat, this is not necessarily the case.

Certainly it was a tactical defeat, but in strategic terms that is not the last word on the matter.
It is true that it did not achieve its objective, which was to knock Turkey out of the war and relieve the pressure on Russia. A lot of men died to hold a few miles of barren exposed ground for a few months, and the survivors then withdrew.

It was no victory and, as every war college teaches, there is no substitute for victory.
But wait a minute. For the Allies, Gallipoli was a sideshow. Compared with the Western Front, their commitment there was relatively small. For the Turks, on the other hand, it was the supreme effort. For obvious reasons, they gave defence of their homeland priority over campaigns farther afield.
Turkey in 1915, though it had begun making efforts to modernise, was by European standards a very poor country and the Turkish effort at Gallipoli was proportionately much greater than the Allied effort. It was a desperate, all-or-nothing matter.
This supreme effort meant Turkey had no strength to spare to take the offensive in any other theatre. In Palestine and the Middle East, instead of pushing forward and taking the Suez Canal, it was forced to fight a defensive war and was eventually pushed back by small British and Australian forces. The great and valiant Turkish effort at Gallipoli also meant that after the campaign the Turkish army was exhausted. As Lenin said, everything is connected to everything else.
Counterfactuals are not history. But it is worth considering that had Turkish forces not been tied up at Gallipoli, they may have captured the Suez Canal, a vital Allied asset. This would certainly not have been in Australia's interests. They may have also consolidated a hold on the Middle Eastern oil fields, the main oil source for the British fleet.

The Germans, meanwhile, were making efforts to rouse the Muslim world, including the large Muslim population of India, for an anti-British jihad. German propaganda was even claiming the kaiser was descended from the prophet Mohammed. If, instead of barely holding their own, Turkish armies had been on the offensive elsewhere, the idea of a pan-Muslim jihad may have become a lot more plausible and attractive.

Further, while the Germans did not make anything like the same investment in Gallipoli as the Allies, they too were pouring arms and other supplies into Turkey for the campaign. World War I was a war of material, and this German expenditure, although not a good trade from the Allied point of view, was at least a debit on the German side of the ledger: what went to Gallipoli was not available for the decisive battles on the Western Front.

Thus, there is a case that Gallipoli (like, in its way, Vietnam) was by no means totally futile. The Allies tied up enemy forces much greater than their own numbers. I do not suggest the matter is cut and dried. Working out exact relative advantages and disadvantages would be complex and the final verdict one on which historians would probably never agree. But in strategic terms Gallipoli was not necessarily a total loss, and those who died there did not die completely in vain.

But even if it had been a complete and unredeemed disaster, it is still fitting that the Australians and others who fought and died there are honoured and that it should be a place of pilgrimage for their descendants and heirs.
Hal Colebatch is an author.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24591041-7583,00.html