Lest We Forget 
On 25 April 1915, the Anzacs (
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landed at a difficult and desolate spot on the Gallipoli peninsula (
Turkish:
Gelibolu Yarımadası ) and the Turks appeared to be ready for them, a defeat was inevitable.
The
Gallipoli campaign was a debacle. Military censorship prevented the true story being told but a young Australian journalist, Keith Murdoch (
father of Australian newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch) smuggled the story about the scale of the Dardanelles disaster back to the Australian Prime Minister who sent it on to the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who was no friend of the British military establishment.
It led directly to the dismissal of the British commander, Sir Ian Hamilton who never again was to hold a senior military position. The British Government ordered an evacuation. By day, the ANZACs kept up their attacks with more ANZACs observed to be landing - by night the force was withdrawn, broken only by sporadic rifle and gunfire. On 20 December 1915, the Anzac retreat was complete, unnoticed by the Turks who continued to bombard the Anzacs' empty trenches. On 9 January 1916, the Turks carried out their last offensive on Gallipoli, revealing only that the entire force had withdrawn without casualty. The evacuation was the Allies most successful operation in Gallipoli.
A British Royal Commission into Gallipoli concluded that from the outset the risk of failure outweighed its chances of success. The British had contributed 468,000 in the battle for Gallipoli with 33,512 killed, 7,636 missing and 78,000 wounded.
The ANZACs lost 8,000 men in Gallipoli and a further 18,000 were wounded. The ANZACs went on to serve with distinction in Palestine and on the western front in France.
Australia then had a population of five million - 330,000 served in the war, 59,000 were killed.
New Zealand then with a population of one million lost 18,000 men out of 110,000 and had 55000 wounded.
Related site:
http://www.swissanzacday.org/
[
Feel free to register to attend - Lausanne and Vevey ]
and
http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/
Turkish Point of View:
For the Turkish people, it was the opposite. The struggle at Gallipoli was a matter of life or death.
For the previous hundred years, Western powers had been trying to partition the Ottoman Empire and their designs upon it would have left little or no room for an independent Turkey.
If the Gallipoli landings had succeeded, Turkey would quickly have lost its capital and control of the land and sea. It is pretty clear what would have followed such a disaster. So it is perhaps less surprising that such a desperate national situation on the Turkish side gave rise to great heroism and saw the emergence of a remarkable military genius in Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first divisional commander at Gallipoli, the future founder of the Turkish Republic and its first president. Who of us can remember his command to soldiers — "I order you to die" — without a shudder?
Of course, in practice, millions of young men in World War I received exactly this order, but in the case of the soldiers at the Dardanelles they were not being asked to waste their lives. Without their sacrifice, and Mustafa Kemal's leadership, I think it is unlikely that we would have a Turkish Republic today. So during this terrible and pointless conflict, all three countries discovered deep reserves of courage and heroism in their soldiers and came of age as countries.
per His Excellency Murat Ersavci
Ambassador
Turkish Embassy, Australia 2008
EFers from Australia, New Zealand, Turkey and of other nations involved in this conflict ought to organise a social event to remember this tragic episode. 
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