Distinguished guests, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen

I’d like to start my short speech by reading from the records of Turkish General Staff, the identification tag of an Ottoman officer who had lost his life in Çanakkale:

Name: Hidayet /Father’s name: Hasan
Date of Birth: 1884/Place of Birth: İstanbul/Üsküdar
Rank: Senior Captain, 15 th Army Corps/3rd Division/39th Regiment/1st Battalion/3rd Troop
Front Line: Kumkale-Çanakkale (Anatolian coast)
Date of Death: April 25th, 1915

This officer was my grandfather whose name I carry!

Yes dear friends, all wars may give birth to legends but in Çanakkale Campaign all the accounts and memories we know have a very special feature not so common in other conflicts and that is the mutual respect that shaped the national IDs of the peoples engaged.

After the initial battle and truce between the Anzacs and the Turks, sides started to know each other from their own experience and mutual respect with the enemy began to develop among the trenches so close to each other. For instance; The Australian and New Zealand troops refused to wear gas-masks that were widely used in European fronts and when Anzacs were asked about this they replied that ‘The Turks won’t use gas. They’re clean fighters.’ Unlike European fronts, gas was never used in Gallipoli. As Alan Moorehead puts in his remarkable work named Gallipoli “The extreme ferocity with which the battles were fought at Gallipoli gives no inkling of the compassion that the opposing soldiers in the front line felt for one another.”

The saga of Çanakkale campaign has been the building block of national identities of both Anzacs and Turks. Perhaps the most humanistic moral both sides gained from such a bitter experience, unlike other controversies lived throughout rest of the world, is mutual respect for both sides that materializes in Ataturk’s words written in Canberra:

“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 the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away 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.”

Finally, I’d like to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to my Australian colleague for this invitation and giving me the opportunity to address you. Thank you.