The Gallipoli campaign was not about democracy, but defending the
profits and colonies of the British empire, one of the most brutal the
world has seen, writes James Supple
The 100 year anniversary commemorations of Gallipoli will glorify it
as sacrifice for a noble cause. Tony Abbott has called it part of a war
that “shaped our nation”. In 2012 then Prime Minister Julia Gillard
declared on Anzac Day that, “all of us inhabit the freedom the Anzacs
won for us”. But Gallipoli and the First World War was no fight for
freedom or democracy.
The landing at Gallipoli was an invasion of a Middle Eastern country,
modern Turkey, in the service of what was, at the time, the world’s
largest and most powerful empire. Australian troops at Gallipoli were
among almost half a million British, Indian, New Zealand and French
colonial troops who landed there.
At the time, Australian troops were celebrated as dying in the
service of empire. As historian Mark McKenna has pointed out, “For
decades following 1915, the Imperial context of Anzac Day had been
fundamental to the rituals and meaning of 25 April; newspapers, for
example, commonly placed the king’s or queen’s message on the front
page.”
