REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT LUNCH CO-HOSTED BY GOVERNOR OF ÇANAKKALE AND AMBASSDOR OF IRELAND
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT LUNCH CO-HOSTED BY GOVERNOR OF ÇANAKKALE AND AMBASSDOR OF IRELAND WEDNESDAY 24TH MARCH 2010
Governor
Ambassador,
Friends from Ireland, North and South,
Iyi Günler
Dia Dhibh
Good afternoon everybody.
I feel that it is a great honour to be with you here today as we commemorate those who fought and those who died in the Gallipoli/Çanakkale campaign.
We are gathered here 95 years after the devastating military campaign that brought young Irishmen, in British and ANZAC uniforms, into prolonged and bloody conflict with the young men of Turkey. How could we not be fully conscious of the tragic circumstances of those times and the ultimate appalling futility of the suffering and losses endured? Alongside that special purpose, I am also acutely aware that here in the Eastern end of the Mediterranean, we are visiting the cradle of the ancient civilisations that inspired so much of the artistic and cultural achievement of the world. We are in fact at the heart of an important part of our shared patrimony. From this place came forces of hand, heart and mind that shaped our world.
It is a place of rugged beauty but it is haunted by the memory of that historic struggle that unfolded on this peninsula and in the bays and channels around us in 1915 and 1916. It is a time remembered around the world for many reasons. Here in Turkey, the valiant and legendary defence against invasion during the first truly global war was the culmination of a series of contests as the Age of Empires came to a close. Disadvantaged by the turbulence of the previous years and without the modern equipment of the Allied powers they confronted, the Turks relied on the renowned bravery of their soldiers and a resolute, unshakeable determination in defence of their homeland. It proved to be invincible. The cost to the Turks was dreadful. The cost to the Allies was dreadful. The cost to the Irish became a story lost, suppressed and neglected for many of the decades in between.
The story of Gallipoli has sometimes been overshadowed by the major battles of the Western Front, especially the Battle of the Somme, and at Messines where the men of the Ulster and Irish Divisions fought side by side. Such battles were heralded as successes while of course the campaign in the Dardanelles was comprehensively won by the Turks. There was the same heroism and sacrifice on all sides for by the time of the Great War, warfare had become infinitely more terrible and more deadly than ever before.
By the end of 1914, the Western Front had settled into deeply entrenched lines that stretched 400 miles from the North Sea to the Alps. The pressure to develop a breakthrough strategy was enormous and this led to a focus on the capture of Constantinople. It was clear that this undertaking was not without major risk. Foreign military observers as far back as 1807 had recognised that attacking this area would be ‘mightily hazardous’.
The decisions of that time form the background to the tragic encounter of Irishmen and Turks in battle here so many years ago. At this remove, we can reflect with sadness and humility on the young men who fought here whatever their uniform, whatever their side. Some come to remember relatives, to remember heroes, to commemorate victory, to commemorate defeat. We come to pay homage to all those tragically wasted young lives and to call to mind in a special way the most forgotten of them all, the more than 4,000 Irish men whose lives ended here and the many thousands more who returned to Ireland, Britain, Australia and New Zealand wounded in body and in soul.
We cannot know what brought each of them to Turkey’s shores. It was a mosaic of motivation from British nationalists who fought to defend the British Empire to Irish nationalists who believed Britain would grant Ireland her freedom if they fought on her side. Today their regiments are gone but their memory is held dear by the many voluntary associations which sustain the history of the Irish Regiments in the British Army and those who served with the ANZACS. In a divided Ireland those memories and that history were for generations also a source of division but today a peaceful Ireland working its way to reconciliation sees in those who died here and at the Somme, our tragic forebears, our cousins, uncles, fathers and grandfathers, whose sacrifice and wasted lives challenge us to make peace with one another and to build a future of good neighbours, good friends. It was that great, fearless Turkish hero Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who long ago showed us that the way to that peace lay in seeing all those who died as brothers. His remarkable words addressed to the mothers of the invading soldiers who died here still resonate today.
"Those heroes who 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 here 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."
I am here to honour Turkey’s sons and Ireland’s sons, all victims of the world’s complex history. The Great War was to prove the pivotal period of the modern age in Anglo-Irish relations. The Irish who fell here also fell victim to Ireland’s complex history. Those who died here or returned to Ireland were diminished in the national consciousness of the new State that emerged as a result of the War of Independence instituted against the British Empire by their friends, neighbours and families while they were away at war. The war tested allegiances and identities leaving a legacy of fracture and fragmentation that Ireland is only now beginning to come to terms with. Today we revisit the story of those young men of ours who confronted and were confronted by those young men of yours. Between them they made history and they changed history. We meet as friends, as good and firm friends, a joy, a blessing and a privilege they were never to know in their short lives. As we approach the Centenary Anniversary of those times we recall them all with compassion, we acknowledge their place in our story and in our memory, a memory that links Ireland and Turkey in sadness and sacrifice. I thank you for the opportunity to commemorate and honour that memory and that sacrifice. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.