I've been reading the various accounts of the commemoration of the start of the Gallipoli campaign today, and while I have in the past thought mostly of the Allied losses -- 25,000 British dead, 10,000 each from Australia and New Zealand -- I have not paid much attention to the staggering losses of young Turkish soldiers defending their homeland --86,000 of them. It is never too late to amend one's view of history. Part of the problem is that the Turks never had a Mel Gibson sprinting across the battlefield in slow motion on a big screen.
Anyway, as I saw President Erdogan sitting next to Prince Charles, I was put in mind of all the sacrifices made on that peninsula a century ago. Each life mattered then, and each life matters now. It is good that former enemies can sit together and mourn their common loss.

They can join the million and a half mostly Christian Armenians they slaughtered.

this one time, I am in 100% agreement with Gato...

Well, let's see. I had in mind the 86,000 Turkish solders who died on the Gallipoli Peninsula starting with the invasion on April 25 1915.
The Young Turks who began rounding up the first few hundred Armenian intellectuals for execution began their heinous work to the east on 24 April 1915.
I have a very hard time blaming Turks dying in homeland defense on the Gallipoli Peninsula for the outrages occurring in central and eastern Turkey over the next three years.

Well, let's see, why don't you do a little research about the Adana Massacre and see how potentially innocent those dead Turk soldiers were?

The commonly held date of April 24, 1915 as the beginning date of the Armenian genocide is historically erroneous as you will soon find out if you research it.

Well, let's see. How well informed and how nuanced do you think the political convictions were for say, a 17-year-old Turkish private? The Ottomans had very different views of how to treat prisoners than did the Allies. I recently read "Hell in the Middle East." When the Allies finally took control of Palestine and Syria and took many Turkish prisoners, no one looked too harshly on Allied soldiers shooting them after what they had done to Allied wounded.
I am just saying that I feel for all the young men duped into military service in the name of one jingoism or another, and defending the home soil against foreign invaders is generally deemed among the more honorable.
And besides they are NATO members now.

Well, let's see, do you think "how well informed and nuanced their political convictions were" excused the Nazis at the various death camps. Bah, hopefully they and the Turks are rotting in hell.

The Turks made ISIS look like kindergarten children.

Go see Russell Crowe in the Water Diviner. Doesn't matter which side you are on about the Turks, it's an awesome movie.

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
this one time, I am in 100% agreement with Gato...

Yeah...me too! It makes me very uncomfortable

Interesting. For generations, young men, and somewhat older men, have gone forth to fight, kill and die for king and country. I don't think the sins of the sovereign can necessarily be placed squarely on the shoulders of those men.

In some cases, certainly, yes. But, you can't always paint with a broad brush, as much as you'd like to.