The Great War - WW1
Turkey - The Dardanelles
In October 1914 Turkey entered the war on the side of the Germans. In Britain, operations against the Turks were considered necessary both to safeguard the Suez Canal and to relieve the pressure on the Russians by opening up a supply and communications route to them through the Dardanelles Straits, the passage from the Aegean to the Black Sea. A lodgement on the Gallipoli peninsula, on the northern side of the Straits, would also provide a springboard for a drive to Istanbul, forcing the Germans to withdraw troops from the Western Front. This was the argument advanced by the so-called 'Easterners', notably Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty.
A Franco-British navel attempt to force the Dardanelles in March 1915 came to grief on Turkish minefields. A hastily assembled expeditionary force of 80'000 men, commanded by General Sir Ian Hamilton, landed on the rocky coastline of the Gallipoli peninsula on the 25th of April. The Turks were taken by surprise, but Hamilton's timid generalship allowed them to rush up reinforcements and trap his men in their landing areas. The British element in the expeditionary force and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps - ANZAC - were to be pinned down for almost a year. Trench warfare ensured, in conditions far worse than those in France. The British and Anzacs held no secure rear, only beaches exposed to Turkish shellfire. Everything, even water, had to be defended day and night. Disease, particularly dysentery, also took a terrible toll.
Two more landings at the beginning of August, offered a fleeting chance of a breakout from the beachheads, but the chance was frittered away. The troops were eventually evacuated in December. The Dardanelles fiasco led to Churchill's resignation and the end of the Liberal government in Britain.