Gordon Barlow

ANZAC Day is Australia's and New Zealand's commemoration of the two nations' invasion of Turkey in 1915. It seems an odd event to celebrate. The invasion was unprovoked, and the ANZAC troops were all volunteers, who joined their armies for adventure and fun. Today we might call them mercenaries.

According to the histories, they killed 200,000 or so poorly armed Turks. Linda and I visited the Gallipoli battlefield in 1965 during our own Big Adventure, but I don't remember seeing any graves. Certainly not 200,000 of them.

BEVS

It isn't a celebration. Rather it is remembrance of the dead. A commemoration and that is for all those that died. All 'sides' .

2016 saw a huge commemoration at Gallipoli itself. Again this is remembered by the Turks as well as the Anzacs.

There are several cemeteries for the dead .

Norm_uk

It's a commemoration of the dead in the Dardanelles Campaign, which is also marked in Turkey as a remembrance of the dead. In no way is it a 'celebration'. Britain, Russia and France were also involved in the Campaign, and the Germans had a military mission involved in the area as well, and lost around 700 men there.

As for being unprovoked - The Ottoman Empire was part of the Central Powers coalition in the war which no one forced them to join. Generally in wars nations attack each other. One wouldn't declare war and join a coalition against other nations and expect no attack. The attack in the Gallipoli peninsula had legitimate military objectives. I don't think it is accurate to claim the ANZACs were "all volunteers, who joined their armies for adventure and fun", and it's extremely insulting to call them Mercenaries when they were all volunteer professional soldiers fighting for their respective nations and their ancestral country Britain, not for money and adventure. It's actually considered a starting point for New Zealand and Australian national consciousness - hardly an expression of mercenary adventure.

As for the Turks being poorly armed - that's an interesting take given the Ottoman Empire had existed for centuries and was more than capable of producing it's own arms and munitions. The Ottoman Empire was built by invading peoples from the Steppes of Asia in the middle ages. They brutally occupied many parts of Europe and the middle east, engaged in slavery (including taking millions of Europeans both as slaves for their armies and concubine sex slaves) and they were hardly some innocent partner in the Central Powers alliance of WWI but were fighting to preserve that then declining Empire. The Turks consider it a high mark of the war as it is seen as a defence of Anatolia as their Empire was collapsing. Turkey still occupies part of Cyprus, and have engaged in genocidal actions against their Kurdish population even in recent decades. If your view of history is a little bigger than a century or so they still occupy all of Anatolia, which was Greek and Armenian and Kurdish for many centuries. They were hardly an innocent party, hard put upon by adventuring westerners.

N.

Lion in Winter

It is remembrance, respect, and in some ways (as my WWII vet father said) a warning - that this is what happens in war.

The UK and a very large part of the rest of the world should be grateful for the number of Australian and New Zealand troops who lost their lives. While any individual action might have seemed futile, poorly managed or pointless (my father was in a few of those in other war arenas), that does not mean that the overarching need to repel murderous fascism was not an imperative call to resist, and any resources taken up in one place meant fewer resources lined up against allied troops in another. All war is brutal, always. People kill and are killed. It should always be avoided if possible. Sometimes, it still is not. Lots of young men join or joined armed forces thinking it will be a bit of an adventure, and don't know ahead of time what it's really like. This does not make them mercenaries.

The 10s of thousands of dead from Australia and New Zealand should be remembered with respect.

Chocolate eclair

It's never been a celebration. It's the ANZAC's Remembrance Day. Poppies are worn, the mood is sombre and respectful. A day for remembering those who gave their lives for the greater good. I have some NZ friends who have been at Gallipoli for ANZAC Day and they describe it as being a very moving experience and one they will never forget.

These young men were not mercenaries (and I think it's very disrespectful to refer to them as such), initially they may have sought adventure but were quickly disabused of that notion. They fought for the allies not just at Gallipoli but wherever they were needed. They joined the ranks of the armed forces, RAF, Navy, SAS etc. We owe them all a huge debt. I for one am deeply grateful to them all.

Gordon Barlow

Gosh, a few misunderstandings, here... 1st: "celebrate" is defined in my dictionary as "perform or observe publicly"; it's not necessarily associated with joy and happiness. 2nd: "mercenaries"... the defenders of Gallipoli might (there's that word again) well have described the Australian and New Zealand troops as mercenaries, of the same ilk as France's Foreign Legion, "soldiers of fortune". Even fifty years alter, very few of the Turks that Linda and I met with had even heard of Australia.

3rd: as for "poorly armed Turks"... here's an extract from Wikipedia's report of the April landings, By the morning of 25 April, out of ammunition and with nothing but bayonets to meet the attackers on the slopes leading up from the beach to the heights of Chunuk Bair, the 57th Infantry Regiment received orders from Kemal: "I do not order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places". Every man of the regiment was either killed or wounded."

Think about that...

old.sparkles

Mate, that's one weird dictionary you own - and a poor understanding on your part. Just about everyman and his dog would take the term to mean a happy / enjoyable event.

'Mercenary' - primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics; professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army.

The Ottoman Empire was a central power in WW1, joined the war in 2014, and were openly engaging in war before Gallipoli (during which they successfully repelled the British, French and ANZACS).

Never been told ' when you are wrong, admit it'?

Gordon Barlow

From The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology... "celebrate: perform or observe publicly and duly; proclaim, [from the 15th and 16th Centuries, respectively] from Latin celeber, frequent, renowned; hence celebration famous, renowned [17th Century]".
And from the more popular Concise Oxford Dictionary... "perform publicly and duly (religious ceremony etc), officiate at (Eucharist), observe (festival); honour, with rites, festivities, etc; praise widely, extol [past participle] widely known..."

Anybody wanting to argue with the Oxford Dictionary people, go for your life. Let us know how you get on.

calman014

What the Turks were up to is well illustrated in the fine classic movie "Lawrence of Arabia".
I have often visited commonwealth graves all over Belgium and France. There are thousands of Commonwealth soldiers buried, including Australian and NZ who lost their lives here in both wars.
There are some fine memorials including this one close to St. Quentin.
This one is of particular interest because the Germans destroyed the original WW1 monument during WW2.
This is the newer one.

Pollyana

During my almost 20 years in Australia (which incidentally is far more recent then the time when the OP lived there) I don't think I ever heard Anzac Day referred to as a "celebration." Not by the general public, nor by any member of the Aussie armed forces - and I knew a fair few of them, one way or another.

spouse of scouse

Exactly. Context is so important in communication.

Gordon Barlow

As a boy on my Dad's sheep-farm in Oz, I watched him kill a sheep every ten days, by cutting its throat while holding it from behind. A few years later, during my National Service - three months in the Army and odd weekends afterwards - they taught me how to kill a man by disemboweling him with a bayonet. You jab hard into the stomach and twist the blade around a bit in order to make sure he dies. Like those ANZAC boys, I might have happily gone off to a war without compunction.

At a British university, my son joined the British T.A. and told me he could see the attraction of life in the army: "You don't have to think, Dad. They do all the thinking for you." So we can both identify with the young Aussies who volunteered for military service in the First World War - and the Boer War a few years previous, and of course the battles against the Australian aborigines from time to time.

Some of us even reach middle-age, before we convert to a human-rights agenda.

old.sparkles

Mate - learn to read a room!

Gordon Barlow

One shouldn't always be afraid to say something unpopular. Live dangerously, little man!

spouse of scouse

There's 'unpopular', and then there's spitting out shite to see where it splatters. Most people can tell the difference.