At Gallipoli, Ottoman defenders held their own against Allied force

THERE is another side to the Gallipoli campaign: the Ottoman perspective.

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

IN November 1914 the first world war turned truly global. Great Britain, France and Russia had been fighting Germany and Austria-Hungary on the Western and Eastern fronts, respectively, since August. On November 2, 1914, as the convoy carrying the Australian Imperial Force sent to join them was just one day out from Albany on the Indian Ocean, Russia declared war on the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Sultan and Caliph of Islam, Mehmed V, reciprocated by declaring war on Russia and her allies on November 11 and on November 13, pronouncing it a jihad for all Muslims.

Response in Muslim countries such as Egypt, India, Yemen and Saudi Arabia was meagre, but the crumbling Ottoman Empire found itself committed to war on four fronts — Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, Iraq, Syria and Pales­tine and the Dardanelles Strait. It was the defence of the latter, with its sea route to the ­Ottoman capital, Istanbul (Constantinople), that was to lead to the Gallipoli campaign and the Ottoman ultimate victory there in 1915.

IT was a tough start to the day of April 25 for the Ottoman 27th Regiment and its commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Sefik. The 1st and 3rd battalions had been marched out around midnight on night exercises to the Kabatepe area, almost to the point where the Anzacs were to land only four hours later. There was no sign of enemy ships. The history of Gallipoli might have been so different had they stayed out there another few hours and opposed the landings at Anzac Cove. Instead, they returned exhausted to their camp near Maidos, two hours’ march away, at 2am and were immediately ordered to sleep. It was to be a short slumber.

Back above the Aegean shoreline, about the same time, Captain Faik of 8 Company, 2nd Battalion, looked through his binoculars out to sea. He was on the high ground on the second ridge behind Ariburnu, the knoll on the northern end of the inlet soon to be labelled Anzac CCove by his enemy. He had been informed that suddenly there were ships on the open sea. There in the moonlight he saw for himself a large number of silhouettes. Faik quickly telephoned his battalion commander, Major Ismet, and sent off a written message. Ismet told him to keep calm and keep watching.

His information at hand was that any landing would be near Kabatepe, 2km to the south. Faik moved to a better vantage point and looked through his binoculars again. He saw a larger mass of ships seemingly closer and approaching. About 2.30am, he informed divisional HQ again by phone but in the darkness could not make out the numbers nor whether they were warships or transports. At around 2.50am, the moon sank below the horizon and all vision was lost. The sighting, though, was enough to alert all shore platoons and reserve units, which were ordered to stand by.

Farther down towards the shore from Faik’s position on the second ridge, Second Lieutenant Muharrem’s 2nd Platoon was positioned around the cove, below Ariburnu knoll (Anzac Cove), the central point of the Allies’ “Z Beach”. They had also seen the ships and readied for action. The Allied hope for a surprise attack had already gone. The thin lines of Ottoman defenders were ready, but the question remained: would any tactical deployment enable the two companies defending Z Beach to hold an initial enemy force numbering in the thousands until the main reserve could be brought forward from Maidos and Boghali, two marching hours away?

Around 4.20am, Ottoman defensive operations were suddenly in action. Private Adil, of 2nd Platoon/7 Company/2nd Battalion/27th Regiment, was dozing in a trench on Ariburnu Knoll under the command of Lieutenant Muharrem. A sentry woke up the platoon with a shout and the men were ordered to move into their positions in the trench. Seventy years later Adil remembered:

There were very few of us in the detachment, about 70, that’s all. The sentry pointed down towards the beach and we saw there were lots of them pouring out of their boats. We opened fire and they dropped down on the beach with their guns in their hands.

Adil’s platoon was immediately brought under Allied fire from the sea with machineguns on the enemy steam-driven tenders, which towed the landing boats towards shore. Muharrem was hit three times, once in each shoulder and, as he was struggling to withdraw up the first ridge, again in the arm.

Second Lieutenant Ismail Hakki, leading a squad of 7 Company/27th Regiment on the ridge above Hell Spit, had also been observing the water closely and made out the first landing boats. He sent one of the first two messages of the landing to Captain Faik, who sent it on to Major Ismet, located at 2nd Battalion headquarters at Kabatepe, and then Hakki’s squad opened fire on the landing craft. First Lieutenant Asim of 7 Company had sent a crucial mes­sage of the enemy landing just after 4.20am: “The enemy has begun its assault on Ariburnu (Anzac Cove).”

Major Ismet confirmed this to 9th Divisional headquarters in Maidos as “many transports and war ships appearing and unloading troops”. It appeared to him a major landing was under way as “enemy operations are understood to be serious and this area needs urgent reinforcements”. The rifle fire from these two platoons around Ariburnu was the first reported Ottoman fire at Australians, some of the 1500 in the Anzac covering force’s first-wave landing.

Sefik later assessed that it was a mistake to wait for the boats to touch shore before opening fire. “It is clear,” he wrote, “that the causes of the Australian forces getting ashore with so few losses were the withholding of fire until the craft got near to land and the fact that the motor boats towing the craft fired back with machineguns and the dispersal of the defenders’ fire power was weak among the 12 craft.”

The Turkish platoons began reacting more vigorously. The commander of 8 Company, Captain Faik, observed the landing boats heading in a northerly direction. He responded by ordering two squads from cover the left flank and reinforce Muharrem but maintain contact with the centrally positioned field HQ platoon. This move sent Ahmet down on to Hell Spit with two squads. Faik took another squad himself and moved forward to the right on to Yuksek Sirt (Russell’s Top) above North Beach. Here they opened fire from 800m down on to the landing 11th Battalion Australians.

As the advanced groups of Australians moved up on to the higher ground, Faik realised the enemy was attempting to head up to the highest point, Hill 971. If he could, he would try to cut this off with artillery deployment on the high ground. The company flag bearer was ordered off to inform Captain Sadik and his four-gun battery behind the 400 Plateau to move north to the slopes leading up to Hill 971 and open fire.

Sadik, when eventually informed, was concerned the landing might be a feint, with the main landing to follow further south at Kaba­tepe, his priority direction. He refused the request. This was to have serious consequences later as his battery near Lone Pine would be overrun by the Anzac vanguard there and lost to the enemy, save one gun.

Faik and his couple of squads were now in the thick of battle, taking the brunt of the landing in the Anzac Cove area. His report detailed how the Australians landing near Fisherman’s Hut were suffering “great losses due to our frontal firing as well as our effective flanking fire from Agildere direction (Fisherman’s Hut)”. He saw men falling in the sea and on shore as the main groups sought shelter in ditches or any other available cover. The frontline battle on North Beach and above Anzac Cove lasted about half an hour in which time Lieutenant Muharrem received further wounds as his platoon withdrew up to the top of the first ridge, Plugge’s Plateau (Hain Tepe).

The first wave of Australians had also hit difficulties from the start. As their boats touched the shore, the men had to jump into about a metre of water and found the seabed covered in round, slimy stones. Officers and men slipped and fell into the water, and stumbled forward, trying to fix their bayonets as best they could. A few reportedly drowned in the deeper water. Australian 10th Battalion commander Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley Price Weir, quickly taking stock, ordered a general advance, “and with a cheer charged up the hill held by the Turks”. The hill was Ariburnu knoll in Anzac Cove. Despite the mix-up of units they already outnumbered the two platoons of the Turkish 27th Regiment that were facing them, some now retiring to the heights above the beach.

To Weir’s left, majors Alfred Salisbury and Sydney Robertson led the two companies of the 9th ashore. A group of scouts led by another officer of the 10th, Lieutenant Eric Talbot-Smith, followed a compass bearing in a southeasterly direction.

Their mission was to spike Sadik’s guns atop the 400-foot (122m) high plateau. The two Turkish platoons retiring towards Plugge’s Plateau (Hain Tepe) were lieutenants Muharrem’s, (including Private Adil), and Ismail Hakki’s units. After opening fire at the incoming boats they had come under fire from the Anzac assault from the beach. In fear of being surrounded they ordered the remaining men to make a fighting withdrawal to the ridge behind. In the process, Ismail Hakki was hit, two other men near him fell wounded and another was killed. Making the summit of the first ridge, he then sent out several scouts to his right and left to harass and hold-up the enemy as much as possible. Wounded or not, his work was not yet done.

He saw scattered groups of retreating men. He gathered together those he recognised from his own platoon and withdrew down into the gully, then the valley behind the first ridge (later named Shrapnel Gully and Monash Valley; Korku Dere/Valley of Fear to the Turks). This eventually brought them to the second ridge. Here they dug in as best they could and waited for reinforcements.

The leading Australians who had reached the trench on Ariburnu knoll found it deserted except for one of the wounded Turkish troops. The Turkish platoon left to hold the summit began firing down on to them. Large numbers of Australians were soon close and within a few minutes these Turks were overrun. The fighting was desperate, close-quarter affairs with casualties on both sides.

Some Turks were left lying in the trench, killed or wounded, while others scurried back down the two rear communication trenches towards the valley behind and across to the second ridge several hundred metres away to the east.

It was a little after 5am.

This is an edited extract from Defending Gallipoli: The Turkish Story by Harvey Broadbent, published by MUP, available now ($32.99).