"...Now, in the Lone Pine cemetery, a Muslim woman kneels and prays at an Australian grave. Her children play among the headstones. And Turkey wants to join the European Union.
Turkish authorities, seeking to promote pride in the history of their secular republic, direct their people to the peninsula and the achievements of Kemal Ataturk and his soldiers, who forced the British, French and Anzacs off their land. It is seen as the last great victory of the Ottoman empire.
The huge statue of Ataturk, who led the Turkish defenders and was to become first president of the republic, towers over Chunuk Bair, the commanding height taken by the New Zealanders but regained by Ataturk. There were Anzac complaints when it was erected close to the New Zealand memorial. But this is Turkey. This land was invaded.
A memorial outside the Turkish military museum at Gaba Tepe silences most objectors: "No students graduated in 1921 from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Istanbul. Those students of this university who should have become doctors in that year, together with the students of the Istanbul Boys Lyceum, joined the 2nd division and on the night of 18-19 May 1915 wrote one of the unbelievable legends of the Canakkale battles by sacrificing their lives, all of them, to defend the sacred soil of our homeland, against the Anzacs." WE GO to Peronne, in search of more meaning, seeking to make sense of death on such a massive scale...."
More:Blood, guts and the stuff of legend - World - smh.com.au
