Completing The Story Of The Gallipoli Campaign .

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1Completing the story of the Gallipoli Campaign: Researching TurkishArchives for a More Comprehensive HistoryBy Harvey Broadbent, Senior Research Fellow, Department of ModernHistory, Macquarie University, Sydney.BackgroundThis article represents a work-in-progress survey on the development stage ofthe Gallipoli Centenary Turkish Archives Project being conducted by TheDepartment of Modern History at Sydney’s Macquarie University inassociation with the History Department at Turkey’s Middle East TechnicalUniversity, Ankara. The universities recently conducted a pilot researchproject to reveal and investigate original Turkish documentation relating tothe 1915 Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War. The campaign isaccepted as being historically significant for both Australia and Turkey.However, the majority of the large amount of historical research on thecampaign has been from Allied sources—British, Australian and French.Research from Turkish sources has been cursory but now recently identifiedTurkish document collections promise to provide the last remaining andsignificant store of Gallipoli Campaign material yet to be researched.The Macquarie University pilot program, with its researches in Turkey,revealed sources of new archival material in three significant collections—The

2Turkish General Staff Archives (TGSA), The Ottoman Archives, The Press andInformation Archives. Further unpublished and published (in Turkishlanguage only) diaries and memoirs exist in private collections across Turkey.Most documents in the TGSA and Ottoman Archives are written in OttomanTurkish, using Arabic script (modern Turkish has used Latin script since theearly 1930s) and there are numerous files in German only and some in French.Dates on documents are invariably in the Ottoman Islamic calendar and needconversion for publication in European languages.The preliminary research carried out in the Pilot Project produced a Catalogueof Documents relating to the Gallipoli Campaign Held in the Turkish General StaffArchives, which serves as a basis for future research in the Archives. It has alsoproduced the beginning of a translated document collection of TurkishGallipoli documents to the extent of around 150 documents, including someoperational and reconnaissance maps. This documentation also includesexamples of hitherto unseen and untranslated battlefield operational reports,messages, signals, numerous maps as mentioned (including aerialreconnaissance), use of aircraft, supply details, intelligence, reconnaissanceand interrogation reports, reports of Allied shelling, various HQcorrespondence, and War Ministry communications. (Some examples appearlater)

3Macquarie University and the Middle East Technical University have recentlybeen joined by the Australian War Memorial in developing the innovativeGallipoli Centenary Turkish Archives Research Project. The aim is to revealthe last major source of un-researched documentation of the campaign locatedin Turkish archival collections. It is planned to publish the findingsperiodically and then produce and publish the fullest possible comprehensivehistory of the campaign to mark its centenary in 2015.The Historiography of the Gallipoli CampaignThe British and French naval operation in the First World War to force theDardanelles Straits in Turkey by ships alone ultimately failed on 18 March1915. The combined fleet’s aim was to reach Istanbul and thereby, in theory,force an Ottoman Empire surrender. The failure of the Allied Fleet to clear away through the Ottoman mines and defences at the Narrows in turn led theAllies, led by British generals, to launch what most military historiansconsider the largest amphibious attack since the Persians landed at Marathonin 490 BCE. In the American Civil War the Union had made severalamphibious landings on the Confederate coast, the largest being at FortFisher, Wilmington, North Carolina, where an assaulting force of over 15,000men and 70 warships with over 600 guns constituted probably the mostpowerful amphibious assault since Marathon (William the Conqueror’sinvasion force in 1066 numbered approximately 600 ships and an army of

47000). But the 1915 amphibious operation signalled the start of the GallipoliCampaign—an attempt, after landing at several beaches, initially with a forceof around 70,000, to cross the Gallipoli Peninsula and capture the Ottomanforts alongside the northern shore of the Straits to assist the passage of thefleet. The campaign began with the beach landings on 25 April 1915 andultimately ended in failure with the last evacuations on 8 January 1916.In the ninety or so years since then there have been numerous detailedpublications on the subject—in English alone over one hundred and twentydedicated to the campaign specifically. Some appeared immediately after thecampaign itself. 1 On these figures, it would seem fair to assume that that wehave the full account of events on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. However,recent access to the Turkish General Staff Archives (TGSA) and other archivalsources in Turkey by a small number of Turkish and foreign researchers,including this author, requires that view be changed. One document, revealedearly in the Pilot Program, serves as example and provided encouragement tocontinue the research in the TGSA. In the initial sampling of TGSA documentsidentified for inclusion in the project files catalogue the signature on onedocument was immediately recognizable. This was the hand of Enver Pasha,the Ottoman War Minister and the Empire’s most powerful politician. On 16June 1915 Enver had sent the document from Istanbul to German AdmiralGuido von Usedom, who had been appointed Commander of the Straits.Attached to it were two maps of the harbours at Imbros and Lemnos islands

5with details of Allied ships at anchor. It was an order to attempt adecapitation of the enemy force.Please find map rendered and provided by our trusted ally, which Iattach. It is of Kefala Harbour on Imbros, where the ship that carriesGeneral Hamilton’s Headquarters is anchored. I request you to carryout a bombing raid there with an aircraft, and moreover, if practicable,to bomb his ship. There is also a copy of the Fleet Headquarters.Minister for War,Enver 2Further sampling showed these archives to be holding a store of such unrevealed information that could lead to a re-assessment of the campaign or atleast a significantly more comprehensive history.The great majority of publications on the Gallipoli Campaign re-work theexisting research material produced by Charles Bean in preparing theexhaustive Australian Official History of the Great War (1st edition, 1921 andseveral subsequent editions). However, Bean and those historians whofollowed him were unable to access existing material about Ottoman activityfrom contemporary 1915 primary Turkish sources. These sources have beenoverlooked in the past due to various factors, including inherent problemswith finding researchers who can read the documentation, which is in

6Ottoman Turkish—the somewhat archaic language and alphabet (Arabic) ofthe Turks in 1915.The main body of knowledge related to the Gallipoli Campaign has beenacquired from collections in Australia, New Zealand and Britain. Thesesources, while rich in material concerning the Allies’ participation, containextremely limited Turkish documentation. This existing material is alsooverwhelmingly researched and written from a British and Alliedperspective. It uses accounts from selected (and relatively few) Turkishsources made available during the preparation of the Australian and Britishofficial histories in the 1920s and 30s. Where they exist, these Turkish sourcesare, in the main, secondary sources. They include memoirs of one or twoleading commanders and assessments provided by the Turkish General Staff.Even though some of the memoirs were based on the authors’ original diaries,they were all written up several years after the Campaign and after the end ofFirst World War. As such they were subject to hindsight and personalinterpretations and remain a limited resource in this respect. Despite theirlimitations they have produced a general appreciation of Ottoman 5th Armydispositions during the campaign but nothing approaching the thoroughnessof accounts of the Allies. The main body of the primary source documentationfrom 1915 held in the archival sources listed above has never beencomprehensively or broadly examined. The Gallipoli Centenary TurkishArchives Project is designed to uncover and delve into this first-hand

7information and make it available in English translation, with research-basedlinguistic and historical interpretation.Essentially then, Bean’s Turkish information, despite his conscientious effortsin producing a general overview of Ottoman activity at Gallipoli, isoverwhelmingly second-hand, anecdotal and from memory. He did not haveaccess to Turkish archives and the Ottoman 5th Army documentation as itoccurred during the campaign except for documents such as some Turkishprisoner interrogation statements and a handful of other Turkish documentsacquired later or intercepted during the fighting. 3 (Bean’s papers containsome interesting snippets of translated Turkish documents such as an aerialreconnaissance report by Nazim Bey of the 16th Division and a Daily Orderby the OC 16th Division 4). Bean, along with the British official historian, CecilAspinall-Oglander, gained his information about the Turkish forces fromanswers to a large list of questions put to the Chief of the Turkish GeneralStaff, Kâzim Pasha, also a Gallipoli veteran5 and from a few other sources.These include a senior Turkish officer-veteran of the campaign, Major ZekiBey, during Bean’s return research mission to Gallipoli in 1919. All thesedocuments are now held in the Australian War Memorial. Only a few ofKâzim’s answers were detailed and Bean was to comment on theirunreliability due to factors such as other conflicting information, questionabletranslation and lack of detail. 6 Zeki Bey’s account was taken down by Bean asnotes from their conversations. In a post-war letter to Bean Zeki Bey confirms

8that he gave his information ‘relying on my memory, during our tour atAnzac’. 7Bean and Aspinall-Oglander also had access to a general account of thecampaign, produced post-war by the Turkish General Staff 8 and later toLiman von Sanders’ Five Years in Turkey, and other German officers’publications (Prigge and Kannengeisser). 9 Useful as they are in presentingGerman commanders’ perspectives of the campaign and their relationshipwith and attitude to their Ottoman allies, they are cursory, especially wheredaily details are concerned, as is the Turkish commander Djemal Pasha’s 1922publication of his memoirs.Both official historians also had a translation of selected sections of 19thDivisional Commander Mustafa Kemal’s memoirs, made at the behest of theTurkish General Staff again after the war. However, Bean stated Turkishrecords as ‘being most unreliable’ and to have ‘been found to containinaccuracies’. 10 Such sources leave many facets and most detail unexplored.Most notably, information is lacking about elements transpiring at companyand platoon level, with individual officers and men, in the reserve positionsand Ottoman command locations. Daily operational reports, likely to be themost useful in detailing Ottoman battle activity, have not yet been revealed.The same applies about conditions of ammunition and material supplies andthe state and nature of intelligence and reconnaissance. When compared to

9the detail Bean and Aspinall-Oglander are able to bring to the Allied side, thecontrast is marked.After the official histories, as already indicated, succeeding Gallipolihistorians have produced research for a large number of books designed forthe general public, including (to name the most prominent) John North’sGallipoli, The Fading Vision (1936), Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli (1956), RobertRhodes-James’s Gallipoli (1965), Bill Gammage’s The Broken Years (1975), Steeland Hart’s Defeat at Gallipoli (1985), Michael Hickey’s Gallipoli (1995), and LesCarlyon’s Gallipoli (2001). These works, admirable in their own strengths, areagain generally confined to the campaign from the Allied perspective. Theydeal in varying degrees with the Turkish situation but again from the wellused secondary sources and remain removed by time from primary Turkishdocumentation of 1914–15.Kevin Fewster and V. and H. Basarin’s A Turkish View of Gallipoli: Çanakkale(1985, 2nd edition, 2003) laid claim to be the first book written in English torepresent the campaign from the Ottoman side. The book provides a generaloverview from the perspective of Australian Turkish immigrant writers anddoes not claim to be more than this. It is useful in broadening the appreciationof events into the multi-national area but, without accessing primary Turkishsources, is far from being a comprehensive historical study of the OttomanArmy at Gallipoli. Its sources for military actions rely preponderantly on

10previously used secondary sources, especially memoirs of Germancommanders. 11By the time Moorehead wrote his book in 1956 the Turkish General Staff hadexpanded their early short history into a 3-volume official history using somedocuments held in their archives and the Allied sources stated above. 12 Thisofficial history, never wholly translated into English, only used around fiftyor so documents from Turkish archives. Scholars who have examined thishistory comment that it adds little to accounts already mentioned eventhough it has been referenced in these accounts. Preliminary research for thepresent project has now provided English translations of the primary sourceTGSA documents used in the production of the Turkish ‘official’ history.Two latter day exceptions, which refer to primary Turkish sources are TimTravers’ Gallipoli 1915 (Tempus, 2001), and Harvey Broadbent’s Gallipoli, TheFatal Shore (2005, Viking Books, Sydney). Both of the works use limited accessgained to the Turkish General Staff Archives in Ankara to examine particularaspects of the campaign from the Turkish perspective using originaldocuments. The benefit of their access, albeit limited, was that this primarysource of Turkish Gallipoli documentation was broadly revealed in themilitary history field for the first time.

11Travers cites 58 original Ottoman 5th Army documents in his endnotesincluding fourteen between 5th Army Chief of Staff, Kâzim and Enver orSupreme Command, several between Liman von Sanders and Enver orSupreme Command, one or two from or about Mustafa Kemal and fourrelating to prisoners of war interrogations. 13The present author (Broadbent), in research for the pilot program referred toabove produced A Catalogue of Document Files Referring to the GallipoliCampaign held in the Turkish General Staff Archives in Ankara, which follows thelogging system of the archives. The major significance of the GallipoliCentenary Turkish Archives Research Project, therefore, is that it will enablethe first-ever comprehensive investigation of Turkish primary sourcesrelating to the Gallipoli Campaign. On completion it will provide the firstdetailed and comprehensive body of knowledge and understanding of theOttoman Army’s responses to the allied landings and activities throughoutthe Campaign. The project is breaking new ground, not just in Australian andBritish military history studies, but also in global First World War studies inthat it promises an extensive and detailed survey of the Ottoman 5th Army’sdefence of its homeland in the First World War.The existence of hitherto unseen documentation in the Turkish General StaffArchives and the other archival sources mentioned represent significant findsin the historiography of the Campaign. With them assessments of Anzac and

12Allied performance will have a firmer historical basis. They promise toprovide new facts and facets about the campaign, particularly relating toOttoman military activity and its impact on the events, explanations forunresolved issues, the investigation of factors and topics hitherto unexamined such as aerial warfare, intelligence gathering and prisoners of war.Further, over and above battlefield events per se preliminary research alsoindicates that information for the analysis of cultural and behaviouralelements and reactions to battle is also present.The Pilot Program also indicated that the historiography of the GallipoliCampaign would benefit from placing priority on certain elements of theOttoman Turkish involvement in the campaign and which, at present, aregreatly under-represented in the existing data and literature. It indicated thereis ample information in the target documentation on elements offering newperspectives, both in terms of military studies and trans-national/crosscultural history.Military PerspectivesInitial document sampling suggests that appreciation of various campaignmilitary issues will be greatly enhanced. Such factors include the strategicthinking and decision-making of the Ottoman commanders and the impact ofOttoman responses and tactics on the outcomes of battles, bombardments andcasualties. 14 New and more detailed information of Ottoman army activity is

13indicated, especially when related to seminal episodes such as the Turkishattack of 19 May, 24 May Ceasefire, the battles of Lone Pine, Krithia,Conkbayiri (Chunuk Bair) and Suvla etc. 15Documents have appeared that relate to assessments of Turkish and Germanorganisational efficiency, command, strategy and soldiering and their impacton outcomes. Assessments arising from such documents will allow moredetailed analyses when balanced against other elements such as thegeography of the battlefield and the ability of the Allies in their planning andexecution of offensive and defensive actions.One exciting area of military history emerging from the archives is theinformation relating to the use of aircraft and the nature of early aerialwarfare at Gallipoli, especially the nature and effectiveness of German andTurkish aircraft use at a very early stage in military aircraft technologicaldevelopment. Documents are appearing relating the use of aircraft forreconnaissance, mapping, and bombing sortées. This usage appears to be moreextensive than previous accounts have been able to establish. One documentcontains aerial reconnaissance and other observational reports, datedvariously from 23 March 1915 to 28 August 1915, coming to Ottoman 5thArmy Command. It relates activities of enemy aircraft, secret actions of theOttoman forces, details of Turkish aerial bombardments, Allied balloonpositions and actions against them, casualties among Ottoman detachments,

14the use of signal and flare guns and states an observed increase in Alliedactivity in the Gulf of Saros. 16Documents detailing aerial reconnaissance are leading towards a fullerunderstanding of the application, methodology, impact and effectiveness ofOttoman military intelligence at Gallipoli when combined with documentsdescribing field observations, prisoner interrogation and espionage activity,wireless interceptions and ciphering. Documents relating to the latterintelligence factors are also appearing in the research. For example,statements about and by Allied prisoners of war were revealed in the PilotProgram research promising a new element in documenting the struggle. 17Other files appear to show documents that will allow the assessment of likelyAllied success (or failure, as we know with hindsight) and the level ofOttoman confidence. Some documents, for example, show periods high andlow morale amongst senior ranks as well as periods of concern aboutammunition supply and the vulnerability level of the Dardanelles Straits. Thefollowing document serves as one illustration.Cryptograph sent by the Commander of the 5th Army,Liman Von Sanders on 9 June 1331 (22 June 1915)

15To His Eminence,

the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War. The campaign is accepted as being historically significant for both Australia and Turkey. However, the majority of the large amount of historical research on the campaign has been from Allied sources—British, Australian and French.

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