“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives… you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours… You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well. Turkey, 1930, Kemal Ataturk, president of turkey.

Ataturk’s poignant message is inscribed in the Turkish Memorial to the Unknown Soldier in Gallipoli, and inscribed also at the Ataturk Memorials in Canberra, Australia and in Wellington, New Zealand. It is no wonder that in distant Australia and New Zealand, there is still a sense of kinship for Atatürk and the Turks — enemies, but fellow witnesses to the unspeakable horrors of trench warfare — and, conversely, a resentment of the British politicians who sent a generation of their young men to fight and die in a land half-a-world away. For the Turks, the Australians, and the New Zealanders, Gallipoli would forever be regarded as the moment when they gained their national identities.

"We landed, I suppose, somewhere about nine or half past nine in the morning. On the Sunday morning, Sunday the 25th of April. And through a mistake made by the navy, we played into the Turk's hands beautifully. Because you can imagine a narrow strip of beach, nothing but stones, no sand, and from that narrow stretch of beach straight up were high cliffs composed