It concerns the huge number of casualties and senseless slaughter endured on Ottoman soil in 1915 that was commemorated last week. In this particular instance, I am not referring to the Armenian Remembrance Day on April 24, which I wrote about in my previous column, but Anzac Day, which occurs on April 25 and is the occasion on which Australians and New Zealanders honor their dead.I have attended one or two dawn ceremonies and was on Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula for the 75th anniversary of the landing, along with nearly 50 veterans -- all of them then in their 90s and one who had celebrated his 103rd birthday the night before. And I have wandered along the battlefields which contain some of the most evocative scenery in Turkey. The narrow of the peninsula which guards the sea approach to İstanbul is within hailing distance of Troy and a site which fuses history, geography and myth. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission tends much of the site, and the pedestal gravestones that litter the hillsides and valleys mark the spots where the soldiers fell. There is a Turkish war grave of sorts, besides the memorial to the 57th Infantry Regiment, which Atatürk commanded, that contains his famous injunction to his troops not to attack but to die. The more famous Turkish memorial is further down at the opening of the straits. Further down, overlooking the sea is the huge Turkish war memorial, finally opened in 1960 -- four massive columns topped by a concrete slab and designed to be part of the skyline visible to the ships that pass through the Dardanelles. It as if the architects took literally the instruction to design a cornerstone of Turkish nationalism.
The truth is that infinitely more English soldiers died in the abortive Gallipoli Campaign than Antipodeans. However, the landings are remembered with greater clarity in New Zealand and Australia. Unlike the glorious victories which underline other national myths, it is the very futility of the war which carries the most resonance. To the young Turkish Republic, it was the defense of territory which is the potent symbol. Down under, it is the loss of innocence. It is partly the congruence of these two emotions which explains why, unlike April 24, April 25 is observed each year without bitterness. In their respective national histories, the encounter is seen as something of a fair fight.
What remains a genuine puzzle to me is the attitude towards individual soldiers' deaths. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is a vast enterprise looking after 1.7 million casualties, 23,000 sites in 150 different countries. Whatever the reality, the official version is that Britain and its Commonwealth recognize sacrifice in the nation's ability to preserve the memory of the fallen soldier in the furthest corner of the globe. It would seem from the Turkish perspective this is wearing a heart too closely on the sleeve. The Turkish style of monument commemorates the "unknown soldier" and celebrates the anonymity of sacrifice. The monument to the 57th Regiment, erected only in 1992, is clearly influenced by the Commonwealth gravesite around it, but it is not a systematic attempt to record and identify the fallen men. Yet the memory of pain and loss cannot be any less for their descendants than for those in Adelaide or Auckland.
I wonder, tentatively, whether this difference in attitudes can help to explain the total mismatch in perceptions in what happened in the east of the Ottoman Empire, also in 1915. Of course the situation was very different. This is not the about the clash of opposing armies but the fate of the civilian population caught in between. It is not just about the scale of destruction, but who was politically culpable and who might have had the power to intercede. But it is also about who has the right to remember and what it is they should be remembering, and here, I suspect, empathy as much as a historical commission might be a key.
