One Hundred Years After Gallipoli

This article was originally published here on ForeignAffairs.com on Thursday, April 23, 2015.

When the Allied force landed, Kemal, then a lieutenant colonel, was being held in a reserve unit five miles from the front. He was quickly deployed on horseback with the 57th Regiment to the steep hills overlooking Ariburnu Point and the famous Anzac Cove. There he encountered retreating Turkish forces—whom, in his own telling, he implored to carry on with their fight to the death, ordering those soldiers who had run out of ammunition to fix their bayonets. Kemal managed to hold on for the next 24 hours under heavy Allied pressure, enduring significant losses until reinforcements arrived to shore up Ottoman defenses.

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