Have yourself a very Orthodox Christmas

Minus all the Western commercial hoopla of 25 December, 300 million members of the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated its Christmas today. The day is celebrated on January 7 according to the old Julian calendar by the Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Jerusalem Orthodox Churches and Mount Athos monasteries commemorate the birth of Jesus 13 days after Western Christmas. Unlike the Catholic Church where the Pope in preeminent, there are 14 autocephalous churches in the Orthodox community, though the mother church is Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the “first among equals”. Photo: Orthodox priests lead a Christmas service at the Bosnian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo (Amel Emric / AP)

At the 1459 Council of Florence monks from the self-governing Mt Athos in Greece refused to let Catholic and Orthodox Churches in return for Western military help against the Turks. As a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. In today’s Istanbul as in many places across southern and eastern Europe, Orthodox Christian worshippers plunged into chilly waters to retrieve crucifixes in ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus. Hundreds from Istanbul's now tiny Greek Orthodox community and Greek tourists attended the Epiphany ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. About 20 faithful leaped into the cold Golden Horn inlet to retrieve a wooden cross thrown by the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Apostolos Oikonomou, a 40-year-old Greek man, clinched the cross. "This year I was the lucky guy," he said. "I wish everybody peace and happy New Year."

Over 5,000 worshippers gathered at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Saviour including outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on the congregation to withstand the “cult of hasty lucre”. Archpriest Sergius Zvonarev of the Moscow Patriarchate said the day was both a solemn ritual and joyous celebration, Zvonarev said the Russian Orthodox Church remained loyal to the Julian calendar which regulated church life and traditions for centuries. “It reveres these traditions as the entire civilized world used to live by them in the past,” he said.

Orthodox Christians gathered in Bethlehem in front of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the Church of the Nativity. Barely days after a fight between various Christian sects over territorial rights in the church, the Mayor of Bethlehem Victor Batarseh said the theme of this year’s celebration was Palestine celebrates hope. “Our message in these days is love and peace to all especially in the Holy Land”, Batarseh said. Over 2,000 scouts from all over the West Bank held a parade through Bethlehem with their marching bands and bagpipes.

Many in Bethlehem say the best band is the Syriac Orthodox Scouts’ pipers. Bethlehem’s Syriac Orthodox community is proud to trace its roots to the ancient Aramean peoples and are among the few people left that speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic. The scouts were established in 1958 and became internationally successful in sports in the 60s and 70s. After the Oslo Accords, their pipers became President Yasser Arafat’s military band. One former band member said they were in Gaza playing the bagpipes for Arafat when the news of Rabin’s assassination was announced. “They thought it was a Palestinian who had killed him so they would not let us leave Gaza,” he said. Today they took centre stage in Manger Square.

In Egypt, Copts nervously celebrated the day as sectarian violence continued, the first Christmas in the post Hosni Mubarak era. US President Barack Obama used the occasion to call for the protection of Copts and other minorities. "I want to reaffirm the commitment of the US to work for the protection of Christian and other religious minorities around the world," he said. The call comes after the military rulers cracked down on a Coptic march in October. Coptic Pope Shenouda III commended Islamist leaders, who attended the Coptic Church service. "We all celebrate together as Egyptians,” Shenouda said.

Nagorno Karabakh: Tensions escalate in the Black Garden

A senior US government official has described the unresolved conflicts of the Caucasus including Nagorno-Karabakh as one of the “most likely flashpoints in the Eurasia region”. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair was speaking to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the open Hearing on “Current and Projected Threats to the United States when he made the statement. But while events in Abkhazia and South Ossetia have gotten plenty of media attention in recent times, the “frozen war” between Armenia and Azerbaijan has fallen off the radar. (photo: Matthew Collin)

Blair said the war (dormant since 1994) may heat up again due to the complications of local international relations. There has been some progress in the past year toward Turkey-Armenia rapprochement, however this has affected the delicate relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and increases the risk of a renewed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, Blair said. There was hope that the Turkey-Armenia border would be opened for the first time since 1993. But Turkey is baulking at Armenian calls to recognise the 1915 genocide and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has boxed himself in by proclaiming that the protocols for reconciliation will not be implemented until Armenia withdraws from occupied Azerbaijani territory.

That prospect seems extremely unlikely. Just how far away the sides are, was exposed in the somewhat surreal announcement this week from The Moscow Times that Armenia and Azerbaijan have “agreed on a preamble to an agreement” on the conflict. The principles of the agreement, first proposed in 2007, would see Armenia returning territories occupied by its troops that lie outside Karabakh proper to Azerbaijan but leaving a corridor linking Armenia with the disputed enclave on Azeri soil.

It is appropriate the Russians try to fix the problem as they caused the mess in the first place. The original name for the area in both Armenian and Azerbaijani was Karabakh (or Garabag) which meant “black garden”. Long a melting pot of Turkic, Armenian, Persian and Azeri influences, the area was subsumed into the Russian Empire in 1828. Under Russian influence the Muslim population declined as more Armenians moved into the province. After the Russian Revolution, the region descended into a series of wars that involved the Armenians, Azerbaijanis and British (who had defeated the Ottomans). Eventually the Red Army took over. Despite initial promises to give the province to Armenia, Stalin awarded it to Azerbaijan to placate a hostile Turkey. Under Soviet rule the appellation “Nagorno” meaning highland or mountainous was added to the name.

Under the Communist ideology, issues of nationalism rarely floated to the surface but tensions remained through the 20th century. As the union began to break up in the late 1980s the Azeri government took advantage by beginning ethic cleansing in the town of Askeran. But when the local legislative body voted for a union with Armenia, the area erupted in all out conflict. Over the next five years, more than a million Azerbaijanis and Armenians were driven from their homes and 30,000 people died.

The Russians negotiated a ceasefire in 1994 which holds tenuously to the present day. As a result of the conflict, Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts (which represents 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory) remain occupied by Armenian armed forces. The capital Stepanakert has been rebuilt, with financial support from Armenia and the huge Armenian diaspora. Peace talks have been the responsibility of the so-called OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by Russia, US and France. The Group has been attempting to broker an end to the dispute for over a decade. In 1997 they tabled settlement proposals seen as a starting point for negotiations by Azerbaijan and Armenia but not by the de facto authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh itself. When Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosyan tried to encourage the enclave to join the talks he was forced to resign amid cries of betrayal.

In 2006 Nagorno-Karabakh held a referendum which voted for the approval a new constitution and referred to itself as a sovereign state. Azerbaijan declared the poll illegitimate but continued to talk peace. However tensions have risen in recent months after a series of tough statements from Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan's long-term dictatorial president. Aliyev has been growing in confidence as energy-rich Azerbaijan has been using some of its huge revenues from oil and gas sales to fund massive increases in defence expenditure. He had now warned that if peace talks don't deliver results, he could order a new offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh and the areas around it. Aliyev told euronews.net military action was “a fundamental right of Azerbaijan”.

Diary of an Istanbul haircut

A bit delayed, but worth relaying:
Monday 20 Oct 2008. We left Bindarme at 7.30am on the hydrofoil to Istanbul. The crowded port boasted ships registered in Panama, Monrovia and Valetta and there was also one from Moscow, a true fish out of water. The boat sped across the Sea of Marmara getting to Istanbul in just two hours.

Arriving at Yenikapi port in Istanbul, I was greeted by the usual plethora of men asking me if I wanted a “tacsi”. But I was determined to set out on foot. The line straight ahead was blocked by the railway to Europe so I headed east in the general direction of Asia. Eventually there is a pedestrian overpass which goes through to a narrow alley onto a busy looking street. It looks promising with signs for Internet and the all-important “otel” (after drawing a complete blank on that score in Izmir). The first two “otels” I try are completely booked out but a third can fit me in for two nights (I wanted four). I wondered if it was because of Arsenal fans in town for the Champions League game tomorrow night. I set out and barely ten doors down I found a barber. I had promised myself a haircut in Istanbul and despite a total lack of the Turkish tongue I figured the language of clippers can’t be too difficult to communicate.

As soon as I was sat in the barber’s chair I was offered a sweet. I looked twice at the offering before the second barber made the “eat” gesture. I had seen this confection barely minutes earlier on the street. It had the look, texture and taste of toffee. “Kurdish” said my new barber friend. “I am Kurdish” he went on. The Kurdish barber stopped cutting my hair to allow me digest the “toffee”. But given that could take some time, I urged him to continue clipping away. A bit of hairy Kurdish toffee couldn’t hurt.

The barbershop had the usual array of incongruous photos common to barbers the world over. Pictures of Istanbul and Pammukale were mixed in with a mural of a Canadian ski slopes.

When I advised the barber with a heavy grunt he had cut my hair to my satisfaction and the universally understood “ok”, he proceeded with the next step of the operation. I could barely believe my eyes as he reached for a cigarette lighter and proceeded to set alight both my ears – Twice! I kept my apprehension to myself, assuming this was some local rite and was surprised the operation was painless. I wondered if this was an effort to quick-dry my ears but as the next step was a hair wash that theory foundered. I assume it was either his way of burning off the hairs from my ear or else a way of taking the piss out of a stupid tourist. The wash felt like a massage and after 15 minutes in the chair I was totally relaxed – despite the earscorching. I walked away with the remains of my Kurdish toffee in my pocket for safe-keeping.

Never plain sailing in Byzantium

It is difficult to imagine Istanbul being any more chaotic than what hapens on the streets but the life in the news appears just as full as mayhem. There is a trial in swing of 46 people accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government and yesterday the judges announced they were refusing to grant them bail. The defendants, known as the Ergenekon network, all have high profiles and they include former army officers, journalists, and a retired university dean. All 46 have denied the charges and claim the trial was politically instigated by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government in order to censor its critics.

The Ergenekon trial is the topic of most conversations around the city and has sharply divided opinion into three camps. Firstly there are those who support the defendants and say the case is an excuse for the Islamist government to suppress its opponents. A second group of government supporters say the suppression of the secretive Ergenekon clique is a major step in the road to enhance Turkey's democracy. The third and most cautious camp consists of the intelligentsia who believe the trial will not result in any concrete gains for democracy as the indictment for the case is weak. But everyone has an opinion. The fact the indictees include generals, journalists, business leaders and an actress means that the case has enormous cachet on the streets.

And what incredibly noisy streets they are. Trams, cars, dolmus and buses compete for space with ever industrious trolley-boys, sackmen and slack-jawed tourists straining to capture the spirit of the place with yet another photograph. The central district of Sultanahmet is almost entirely surrounded by water. The Sea of Marmara lies to the south where an enormous queue of cargo boats awaits a spot to load and unload. East is the Bosporus and Asia across the water. A steady stream of ferries take the thousands home and abroad though the toll-spanned Bosporus Bridge is eating in to their traffic. North is the Haliç – the Golden Horn which splits the two European arms of Istanbul. Here the bridges are awash with fishermen and foodstalls and a clutter of noise and energy.

Napoleon reputedly once said that if the world had a capital then Istanbul would be it. And although it is not even the capital of its own country, the Corsican genius had a good point. Not only is the city's geography illustrious, so is its history. That history is most redolent in the three buildings that dominate Sultanahmet's Bosporus shoreline, the Blue Mosque, Aghia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace.

The Blue Mosque is the colloquial name for the Sultan Ahmed (Sultanahmet) mosque and is the country's national house of prayer. It was built in the 16th century by Ahmed as the first mosque of his massive Ottoman Empire which stretched from Morocco to Persia and from Ethiopia to the gates of Venice. The mosque earned its common name thanks to the blue tiles adorning the walls of its interior.

The Ottomans had inherited the great city of Constantinople two centuries earlier when it finally ended the thousand-year reign of the Eastern Roman Empire. Back in 532, its great emperor Justinian had also ordered the construction of a great building in Istanbul to honour his deities. That building was the Aghia Sophia, which would be the largest basilica in the world for a thousand years. When the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453, it was re-consecrated as a mosque still replete with Byzantine murals. Then in 1923 Turkey's great modern secular leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum as part of his move to abolish the caliphate.

Also now a museum is the next door Topkapi Palace. Topkapi was the home of the Ottoman emperors for 400 years. It was built after the capture of the city and is a complex structure divided into four courtyards each one leading into more restricted parts of the palace. By the mid 19th century, its Asiatic style was becoming tiresome to the more sophisticated tastes of the Europeanised sultanate. They abandoned it in 1853 and Kemal Ataturk transformed it into a national museum in the 1920s.

The ghost of Ataturk still haunts the city. His image appears on many Turkish flags branding by streetsellers and hangs from the windows and from portraits on the walls of shops. Erdogan's government may have the veneer of Islamism that provoked the ire of the plotters but a strong taint of capitalist secularism lines the streets. The merchants compete on equal terms with the muezzins. Money is the real religion here.

Chaos, Chios and Cesme

I was never supposed to be in Chios or Cesme. The idea was to get the nine hour ferry from Pireaus to Lesbos and then sail into Turkey via Ayvalik. But somehow I was convinced the ferry made good time from the mainland or that I had researched it wrong and it was only a seven hour voyage. In any case I blissfully disembarked the ferry from Pireaus and sought out the nearest hotel as the last light faded behind the hills of the port.

It was not until I entered the lobby of the hotel that I noticed something was amiss. The wording on the scenic picture that greeted me was Chios not Lesbos. I did not want to ask the lady at the desk where I was (which seemed too silly for words). Then I remembered some people on board the ship who did not seem in a hurry to disembark. Putting that together with the 2 hours gained, I realised there and then that my ferry made two stops and I had accidentally got off at the first port of call. At that moment the ferryboat hooted loudly and I could see it leaving port by the window. For better or worse I was staying in Chios.

Immediately I smiled at my mistake for I knew this was actually a good outcome. Researching ways into Turkey via the Greek islands, several Internet sites said Lesvos was the most expensive port of departure and Chios and others were a lot cheaper. Plus it meant I would land in Cesme which was loaded in history. All that remained was to find out more about Chios itself.

It was a large island by Aegean standards. Lesbos was Greece's third largest island and Chios wasn't far behind in fifth. The large island was itself another reason why it never twigged I was headed for the wrong place.

The fame of this island is based upon its mastic gum. Mastic is a small tree almost unique to Chios. In a small area on the south of the island, mastic trees produce a distinctively flavoured resin, also known as mastic. Mastic has been used as a spice for over 2,000 years as a gum, medicine or to spice up cakes, pastries and liqueurs. When Chios was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, the spice and the area it grew in became crucial to defend.

I took a leisurely local bus to the town of Mesta barely 35km from the town of Chios but one hour away on narrow winding roads. Here in the southwest of the island is the heart of mastic production. This village, like many around it, was built in defensive formation with the houses tightly packed around the church making it difficult for enemies to penetrate. These mastic villages have controlled the gum production since Roman times.

The pretty town of Chios itself faces off the Turkish port of Cesme visible less than 10km away. The waters between the towns were the scene of a crucial 18th century naval battle that was instrumental in the growing reputation of the Ottomans as the sick man of Europe. Here in 1770 was fought the battle of Chesma in the Russo-Turkish war. Aided by British naval officer Rear Admiral John Elphinstone, Russian forces under the command of Grigory Potemkin defeated the Turkish navy which sought refuge in Cesme. Potemkin was a particular favourite of the German born Tsarina Catherine the Great who called him endearingly "my dear pigeon".

Dear pigeon's victory established Russian control of the Aegean and Catherine erected Cesme Palace in his honour. The palace is still extant but it is the Cesme castle that is the major drawcard. The castle was built by the Genoese rulers of the 14th century and passed into Ottoman hands around 1400. Bristling with towers that slide down the hill to the port, the castle presents a fearsome barrier to control of the mainland. Outside lies a statue that attempts to turn this dark page of Ottoman history into a victory.

This is the monument of Gazi Hasan Pasha next to his lion. Kaptan Pasha was a former slave who rose through the Ottoman naval ranks. He avoided worse disaster in the battle of Chesme by withdrawing part of the Turkish fleet to port. Despite personally bringing the bad news of defeat to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, he was eventually promoted Grand Vizier. Cesme still proudly honours the Pasha, an attitude probably for the best when dealing with someone with such a potentially nasty pet.

Double challenge for Turkey’s embattled Premier Erdogan

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has been forced to defend his country’s democracy in the face of two major challenges to his power. Turkey is still coming to grips with the news of a planned military coup by an ultra-nationalist organisation probably backed by the military. Meanwhile his own Justice and Development Party (AKP) faces court charges accused of introducing Islamic rule. Erdogan went on the attack overnight against this double challenge. "I want to stress once again that the democratic system is working with its institutions and rules in Turkey within the framework of the law," he told party members. "Turkey has the experience to overcome this painful period and solve its problems with its domestic dynamics. Nobody should be worried.”

But many in his audience are very worried. The court case will decide the very future of the AKP. This landmark case in the country’s highest court, the constitutional court, will have to decide this week not only whether to shut the party down but to also ban its leaders including Prime Minister Erdogan, from politics for five years. The chief prosecutor accuses the AKP of anti-secularism and of seeking to dismantle the secular political system introduced by Ataturk in the 1920s. The AKP dismisses the charges as a politically motivated elitist judicial coup. It says they court is threatened by the party's electoral strength, drawn from a broad cross-section of the emerging middle classes.

While the AKP has its day in court, Ankara police are shedding more light on Ergenekon Operation. The operation is named for an ultra-nationalist political gang which has been carrying out secret preparation for an overthrow of the government. Dozens of high profile arrests have been made including a former chief of police, the head of Ankara’s chamber of commerce and several retired army generals. The plot shows the increasing desperation of the military elite at the continued popularity of Erdogan’s party.

The AKP has governed since 2002 and won a landslide second successive election victory last summer. Their reign of power in Turkey has been matched by the growing Islamism at a local level. Turkish academic Professor Sarif Mardin calls it "neighbourhood pressure" aimed at forcing secularists to conform to a more religious environment. Mardin says the secularist middle class is succumbing to mounting social pressure at the hands of rising conservative class, which, although increasingly westernised and globalised, has questioned several social values upon which the state was founded. Importantly, this included the role of religion in shaping public space and social ethics.

Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 out of the ruins of the old Ottoman Empire. His grand aim was to modernise the nation. He set upon a course of rapid secularisation and quickly disestablished the Islamic institutions that held a stranglehold over the legal and education systems. Active opposition to Kemal’s reforms was ruthlessly stamped out. When a pro-Islamic party won power after World War II (thanks to elections encouraged by the US), the pro-Kemal army removed it in a coup after a decade of rule.

Under military rule, the Islamists retreated to the domains of education and the press to get their message across. In the seventies a revitalised Islamist National Salvation party formed the balance of power between left and right wing groups in Turkey until another military coup ended democracy in 1980. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was active in National Salvation and joined its successor party Welfare in 1983. He successfully ran for mayor of Istanbul in 1994 on the strength of his excellent skill in oratory. With Welfare growing to become the largest party in Turkey, the army clamped down and banned it in 1997. Erdogan was arrested and convicted of “religious hatred” and spent four months in prison.

Erdogan and others formed the AKP out of the ashes of Welfare in 2001 claiming it to be a “moderate conservative party” to avoid further armed interference. Just a year later, AKP won a crushing victory in a general election despite winning just 34 percent of the vote. Their victory was widely interpreted as a protest against Turkey corruption-ridden body politic rather than a sweeping endorsement of Erdogan’s religious nationalism. But Erdogan has proved to be a competent and attractive leader and was comfortably re-elected last year. As Angus Reid points out, since taking office Erdogan has reconciled the secularist principles of the Turkish Republic with the democratic code that demands that the State respect individual freedoms. But his party’s Islamist roots leave the military deeply suspicious. They may be ready to step in again, either under the cloak of the courts or a coup.

Downer swaps Canberra for Cyprus

With the support of the Labor Government, former Liberal foreign minister Alexander Downer is now likely to become the UN Special Envoy for Cyprus. Although not yet officially announced by the UN itself, Downer made the announcement himself from London where he is involved in private discussions about his future. The 56 year old South Australian said Australia has a humanitarian interest in a resolution to the Cyprus dispute because of its own large community of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. "I will be working toward helping the Cyprus saga,” he said. "I will be working toward helping the Cyprus saga, working as an envoy to try and resolve that long standing issue." “Working as an envoy to try and resolve that long standing issue."

The news came as Downer officially announced his retirement from federal politics today. The news brings an end to speculation of what role he might play in a future Liberal leadership contest. His last day in Canberra will be 14 July and there will follow a by-election in the Liberal blue ribbon seat of Mayo. Apart from the Cyprus role, Downer plans to work in an Adelaide consulting firm and also take up a part-time position in a South Australian university. Downer was Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister, lasting 11 years in the job throughout the entire period of the Howard Government.

Bernard Keane in Crikey was scathing about Downer’s legacy. Keane called him Australia’s “worst foreign minister of recent decades” who was the White House’s lapdog for most of his 11 year stint in the job (coinciding with seven years of the Bush administration). Keane castigates Downer’s role in the decision to go to war with Iraq, his intellectual dishonesty in the AWB scandal, and the damage he caused to the relationship with Papua New Guinea.

But Downer is not without his supporters. Writing today in the Wall Street Journal (the cross-benefits of Murdoch’s ownership becoming increasingly apparent), Australian right-wing journalist Janet Albrechtsen described Downer as a “stalwart and articulate defender of the legitimate right of Australians to determine their national sovereignty”. She claims that Downer’s determination to stay the course in Iraq has won Australia influence in Washington which will benefit Kevin Rudd while he (Downer) heads off to become Ban Ki Moon’s “fix-it man in the Mediterranean”.

Downer will have a difficult act to follow in current Cyprus special envoy, the Ethiopian-born Taye-Brook Zerihoun. Zerihoun is an experienced diplomat who formerly served as a UN envoy in Sudan. He spent his last few days in office in the island nation talking to both the Cypriot Greek leader Dimitris Christofias, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Mehmet Ali Talat. He told a Medal Parade of the UN peacekeeping mission that there's been marked progress in the peace process in the last few months, a development which he adds, has engendered much optimism and goodwill in Cyprus and around the world.

One of Zerihoun’s last acts was to bring Christofias and Ali Talat together again on Tuesday for further talks on reunification. The leaders agreed in principle on the issues of single sovereignty and citizenship. Citizenship has been a key concern for Greek Cypriots particularly as they try to halt the growing number of naturalised mainland Turks who have moved to the island since Turkey’s 1974 invasion. The Turkish Cypriots, meanwhile, want the federation of the two communities foreseen in the UN-brokered peace talks to be an entirely new creation. This is opposed by the Greeks who want their government (recognised across the world except by Ankara) to continue to be recognised.

While these basic issues will take some time to resolve, Zerihoun has brokered other initiatives in recent months in an attempt to make life easier for both sides. They include educational programmes on cultural heritage; steps on road safety; easing the movement of ambulances between the two sides; the establishment of a Cyprus Joint Committee on Health; cooperation for an island-wide assessment of all major waste streams; and agreement on environmental education. Zerihoun has been backed up by the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) which has been on the island since 1964 charged with preventing communal violence.

It was Downer himself who announced Australia’s last envoy for Cyprus. He appointed John Spender to the role in 1998. Back then, Downer was worried by the continuing deadlock over efforts to bring the Greek and Turkish communities together. “Thirty-five years since the outbreak of intercommunal fighting and 24 years since the Turkish invasion of 1974, the problem of Cyprus remains unresolved, “ he said “A settlement is long overdue.” Now Downer will have a direct opportunity to make that happen.

Armenia state of emergency after disputed election

The Armenian government has imposed a 20-day state of emergency after police killed eight demonstrators protesting against a disputed election result.
Outgoing President Robert Kocharian has banned public rallies and imposed a communications blackout of internet, satellite and non-state TV in the capital Yerevan. The confrontations over allegations of electoral fraud have led to death, injury and property damage.

The violence erupted on the weekend between government forces and opposition activists. Police fired shots and used clubs and tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators. They also broke up a camp site where hundreds of protesters had stayed for more than a week. As well as the eight dead (seven civilians and one police officer), over a hundred people were injured in the clashes. Kocharian has since deployed hundreds of troops to enforce the state of emergency.

The violence is in response to the disputed presidential election on 19 February. President Kocharian's handpicked successor, Serzh Sargsyan defeated Levon Ter-Petrosian in the election. Western observers declared the poll “relatively fair” however Sargsyan had the benefit of massive state TV coverage. Official results gave Sargsyan 53 per cent of the vote while Ter-Petrosian received 21.5 per cent. Ter-Petrosian's supporters said the election was marred by ballot stuffing and intimidation. Armenia's deputy prosecutor-general came out in support of Ter-Petrosian and encouraged his supporters to continue protesting. Ter-Petrosian was subsequently placed under house arrest. After 11 days of peaceful protests, the demonstrations became violent on Saturday.

Yesterday, the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) sent a special envoy to Armenia to try to resolve the political crisis. Finnish Foreign Minister Ilkka Kanerva, whose country currently holds the OSCE'S rotating chairmanship, said he sent his special envoy to bring both sides to the negotiating table. Heikki Talvitie, a veteran diplomat with long experience in the region, will hold separate talks with Kocharian, Sargsyan and opposition leaders. "The OSCE considers dialogue central to stability, and stability is vital in the South Caucasus,” said Kanerva. “Everything should be done to avoid further casualties and any further escalation of tension.”

Levon Ter-Petrosian led Armenia for most of the 1990s. He was elected president in 1991 with four policy planks: the development of a market economy; democratisation; a realistic foreign policy unburdened by Russia or the Armenian genocide; and the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Ter-Petrosian was portrayed in the west as an introverted intellectual, a democrat, and a moderate. He was re-elected in 1996 but hardliners forced Ter-Petrosian to resign the presidency two years later due to his dovish stance on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Kocharian replaced him as president.

Kocharian and Sargsyan are both natives of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region over which Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan fought a war in the 1990s. Peace talks have stalled over Kocharian’s refusal to return Azerbaijani regions captured during the 1991-94 conflict. At the time Turkey froze diplomatic relations with Armenia in solidarity with Turkic-speaking and Muslim Azerbaijan. Complicated by the Armenian massacres of World War I (which Turkey refuses to acknowledge), the countries have not yet restored relations.

While there is close economic cooperation in the region between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, Armenia prefers to deal with Iran and Russia. Armenia borders Iran and lies on a transit route from the energy-rich Caspian Sea region. Armenia currently relies on Russian pipelines for natural gas but intends to diversify its supplies by purchasing gas from Iran. Construction finally began in early 2005 on the Iranian portion of the pipeline. The 140km natural gas pipeline is financed by Iranian Bank of Export and Development at a cost of $30 million.

Kurds Turkey shoot

With Turkey on the brink of attacking Iraqi Kurdistan, one of the potentially great faultlines of the 21st century could be opened. There are 25 to 40 million people that call themselves Kurds. Their misfortune is to be scattered over rugged terrain in some of the most important countries of the Middle East. A Kurdish proverb says 'the Kurds have no friends but the mountains'. This is particularly true today when there is little enthusiasm in the wider world to support the merits of a separate Kurdish nation. The Kurdish nationalist party PKK is declared a terrorist organisation in the US, Europe and Australia.

While Kurds have some autonomy within Iraq, they remain a disadvantaged minority group in Iran, Syria, Armenia and Turkey. Although Iranian troops invaded Iraqi Kurdistan last year, it is the Turks who feel most vulnerable to the Kurdish threat. Turkey does not recognise its Kurdish minority and simply calls them “Mountain Turks”. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is now seeking approval from his parliament to launch an “incursion” into Iraq any time in the next 12 months.

This is no idle threat. In May, Erdogan called for an invasion of Iraq to seek out Kurdish militants and take what the Turkish foreign ministry calls “urgent and resolute measures”. It was in response to a suicide bombing in Ankara which killed six people and injured more than 100. The Turks identified Guven Akkus from Turkish Kurdistan as the culprit and said his methods were similar to those of Kurdish militants. The PKK have copped much of the blame even though there is no link between it and Akkus and it denied responsibility. One Turkish commentator described Akkus as a “Communist”.

While Turkey may be looking for an excuse to punish Kurdish militia, locals have promised a tough reception if they invade. A Kurdish rebel commander told AP on Saturday Turkey would face a long and bloody conflict if it launched an attack. Murat Karayilan, head of the armed wing of the PKK, said an invasion would "make Turkey experience a Vietnam war." "Iraq's Kurds will not support the Turkish army," he said. "If Turkey starts its attack, we will swing the Turkish public opinion by political, civil and military struggle."

The PKK was founded in 1973 and gets its initials from its Kurdish name, Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers Party). They first launched an armed independence campaign in Turkey’s southeast almost 25 years ago. More than 37,000 people have died in the ongoing violence with deaths spread evenly between the two sides. Turkey launched a major military crackdown in 1999 and captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan causing 5,000 fighters to flee to Iraq. The PKK is not entirely welcome in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are already two Kurdish factions in Iraq which exist in an uneasy power-sharing relationship. The PKK operates as a Pan-Kurdish organisation that rejects Iraqi Kurdish efforts to remain within Iraq.

The 25 million Kurds are not necessarily politically united. They are spread across eastern Turkey, northern Iraq, western Iran, and parts of Syria and Armenia. 12 million live in Turkey. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres which fixed Turkey’s border after World War I included the “possibility” of a Kurdish state but Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk rejected it three years later. From the 1980s, the PKK spearheaded a bitter armed resistance in Turkey's Kurdish southeastern provinces.

The PKK gained momentum in the 1990s with the rise of charismatic leader Abdullah Ocalan. But while his supporters call him "Apo" (Kurdish for "uncle"), the Turkish state calls him "child murderer" and "terrorist". Ocalan studied political science at Ankara university where he set up the PKK with fellow students. He left Turkey before the September 1980 military coup and remained in exile until 1999. He was controversially captured in Kenya, with the suspected help of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad. Turkey triumphantly paraded their prisoner in blindfold for the world’s media.

Since 1999, Ocalan has been held in solitary confinement as the only prisoner on Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, guarded by a thousand Turkish military personnel. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001. Ocalan appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. Turkey, mindful of the impact to its possible EU membership, agreed to await the court’s judgment. In 2005 the European Court of Human Rights decided Ocalan’s trial was unfair. However Turkey dismissed a retrial request last year.

While Ocalan festers on Imrali, his homeland is about to take a greater role on the world stage. Turkey has used the US congress stand on the Armenian genocide as an excuse to ignore calls for caution in Kurdistan. Now the price of oil has surged to a new record high of $84 a barrel as the crisis threatens some of the nearby oilfields. Analysts are worried that if Turkey attacks Iraq, the PKK will target the Iraq to Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The “Mountain Turks” will soon find out how many friends they have.

Cyprus talks resume between Greek and Turkish communities

The leaders of Cyprus’s divided communities met yesterday for the first time in over 12 months in the UN buffer zone in the capital Nicosia. Tassos Papadopoulos, Greek Cypriot president, and Mehmet Ali Talat, Turkish Cypriot leader, held a three-hour meeting facilitated by a UN resident representative, Michael Moeller. Ahead of a Greek Cypriot election, the talks did not make great strides. However Moeller said the two leaders "agreed on the need for the earliest start for the process" and "discussed other issues leading to a comprehensive settlement." Negotiations have been stalled since Papadopoulos rejected a UN power-sharing plan in 2004 which the Turkish Cypriots accepted.

The latest talks were welcomed by British foreign minister David Miliband who currently visiting Turkey. He pledged London’s support for a lasting settlement that would eventually lead to Turkey’s accession to the EU. “We very much hope that those talks will be entered into with real openness and determination on both sides,” he said.

At the heart of Cyprus’s problem is the mistrust and political rivalry between the island’s two ethnic communities. 80 percent of Cypriots are Greek Orthodox while the remainder are Turkish Muslims. Both sides claims to the island are rooted in history. Cyprus has been part of the Hellenic world since about 1000 BC and part of the Ottoman Empire since 1571. Ironically the Ottomans restored the Greek Orthodox religion which had been suppressed by the previous rulers, the Venetians.

In 1878, the Ottomans reached a secret agreement with Britain called the “Cyprus Convention” to transfer power of the island to the British. In exchange the British agreed to pay an annual lease and supported the Ottomans during the Congress of Berlin which redistributed Bulgarian territories back to the Turks. In the face of public opposition, the British reneged on the tribute and the money was diverted to pay off Crimean war loans instead.

After Turkey’s defeat in World War I, Cyprus became a crown colony. Britain formally annexed the island in 1925. Rebels began a campaign to end British control. However unlike Ireland and India, the Cypriots did not by themselves constitute a nation seeking independence. Instead, they saw themselves as an unfree part of a nation which possessed its own state. Consequently, for the Greek Cypriots freedom was synonymous with the goal of “enosis” - union with Greece.

It was gradually recognised, however, that enosis was politically unfeasible due to the presence and increasing assertiveness of the island’s Turkish community (about 18 per cent of the overall population). Instead, Britain signed the Zurich-London Treaty which declared the independent Republic of Cyprus in 1960. After pressure from the Turkish minority, the 1960 constitution went to great length to grant both groups cultural autonomy and institutional power sharing within a common state. At the time of independence Greeks and Turks intermixed in towns and villages across the island; there was no territorial base to divide the country into Greek and Turkish zones.

The Turks had a guaranteed 15 out of the 50 seats in parliament, three out of ten ministers and extensive powers of veto. In 1963 a frustrated Greek Cypriot President Makarios proposed amendments to the constitution to change guarantees on the number of Turks in the military and the civil service and remove the Turkish veto power. The changes were strongly resisted by Turkish Cypriots became the catalyst for a decade long conflict between Greek and Turkish elements separated by a UN peacekeeping force.

In 1974 the rightwing Greek junta arranged for the overthrow of Makarios and replaced him with a hardline Greek Cypriot government led by Nicos Sampson. Turkey feared this was a precursor to a Greek takeover and unilaterally announced a “peace keeping operation” to restore the constitutional order. They invaded the island and established control over the north. The invasion caused Greeks to flee south and Turks in the south to flee north fearing retribution. This ethnic cleansing resulted in a new entity called the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) which occupied 40 per cent of the island.

The international community condemned the invasion but the Turks were allowed to keep control. The TRNC has not been recognised by any country except Turkey which resettled peasants from Anatolia on the island to shore up its hold. The UN came in to police an 180km long middle ground known as the “Green Line” as positions hardened on both sides. The Green Line was up to 20kms wide and divided the capital, Nicosia, in two.

The (southern) republic of Cyprus joined the EU in 2004 after a 12 year waiting period. At the time, the European Council confirmed its strong preference for EU accession by a united Cyprus and insisted Greek and Turkish Cypriots to continue to negotiate with the objective of concluding a comprehensive settlement. However Cyprus was accepted into the union even though this clause was never realised. Talks in 2004 and again in 2006 failed to achieve the breakthrough.

Turkey also wants to join the EU by 2012 but Greece and Cyprus both insist it solve the Cypriot question before their application will be granted. However Turkey may turn this position to their benefit by agreeing to forego the TRNC in order to overcome Western apprehension of an Islamic country in the European alliance. In July 2005, Turkey included Cyprus in an expanded customs union with new EU countries offering preferential trading terms.

Issues to be resolved include the property rights of those made refugees by the 1974 invasion and the rights of minorities. The last time the two sides met was in July 2006, the two sides agreed to set up working parties to tackle issues affecting all Cypriots. They agreed on a twin-track process of technical and political talks. But none of the proposed groups has ever met.

The EU hope to implement a three part plan: Turkey to open its ports to Greek Cypriot shipping; Famagusta to be handed over from TRNC to the EU; and Varosha, the resort area of Famagusta, a no man's land since the invasion, would be handed over to the UN to allow Greeks to return. While these goals remain elusive, at least the sides are talking again. Tim Potier, assistant professor on international law and human rights at Cyprus's Intercollege, said the consequences of failure will only impact on the two communities and the island. "It's better for expectations to be lowered and the front door left open for further discussions," he said.

No Turkey thanksgiving for the Pope

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Turkey today to start his first official visit to a Muslim country. The pope will travel to Turkey’s three biggest cities, Istanbul, Izmir and the capital Ankara, during his four-day stay. Although authorities will welcome him warmly, his arrival is not a matter of delight to thousands who protested against the visit of an ‘enemy of Islam’. 25,000 demonstrators lined the streets of Istanbul on Sunday chanting “no to the pope!” The protest was organized by the Saadet (Felicity) Islamist political party who see Benedict as a symbol of Western intolerance and injustices against Muslims.

Security forces are on full alert for the pope's visit. Nearly 4,000 police, including units in full riot guard, watched over the protest. According to Selcan Hacaoglu, a Turkish journalist with AP, Turkey has mobilised “an army of snipers, bomb disposal experts and riot police, as well as navy commandos to patrol the Bosporus Straits.” The pope will travel through the streets in a closed car, not in the glass-sided "popemobile" usually used on papal trips.

The pope's visit has two distinct objectives: firstly to assuage Muslim anger after his Regensburg comments and secondly to heal a thousand year rift between two branches of Christianity: the Vatican and Orthodox churches. Meanwhile Turkish officials hope to use the visit to promote their ambitions of joining the EU and showcase the country’s secular political system. Benedict’s first stop is Ankara where he will meet with political and Muslim religious leaders. Not among them is Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan who is in Latvia to attend a NATO meeting for the first two days and then has “some important meetings” in Turkey for the last two days. Benedict will however meet two senior Turkish officials, the president Ahmet Necdet Sezer and its Ali Bardakoglu, the Islamic cleric who oversees the country's religious affairs. Bardakoglu recently told Reuters “the Pope is head of the Catholic world and maintaining good ties between the Islamic world and the Catholic world is in everybody's interests”.

After meeting the politicians in the capital, the pope then heads to Istanbul for the second half of his mission. There he will meet the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Of Turkey's 70 million population, some 65,000 are Armenian Orthodox Christians, and 20,000 are Roman Catholic. Despite the low number of adherents, Istanbul remains the spiritual home of the Orthodox Church. Then known as Constantinople, it was the Christian Byzantine capital for over a thousand years until it fell to Muslim forces in 1453 and became the seat of the Ottoman Empire.

Benedict XVI, spiritual leader of 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide, has been on the defensive in the Muslim world for the last three months. On 12 September, he addressed an academic audience at the University of Regensburg in Germany which aroused Islamic indignation worldwide. In the speech Benedict mentions a conversation between an obscure 14th c. Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The pope quotes Paleologus as saying “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The speech caused a hail of negative reactions across the Muslim world still smarting from the Danish cartoons controversy. In Somalia, a gunman shot dead an Italian nun, thousands protested at rallies in Iran, Pakistan and India, and in the Palestinian Occupied Territories angry mobs attacked Christian churches. Benedict apologised a few days later saying “these in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought”. In Turkey, protesters took to the streets but religious leader Ali Bardakoglu welcomed the Pope's apology, and described his respect for Islam as a "civilised position".

But Prime Minister Erdogan has not been so accommodating. Both sides have been playing down his decision not to meet with the pope. A Turkish official told Reuters that "if there was a possibility for a meeting, the prime minister would have met him". The Vatican says it was always aware a meeting between the two was unlikely. But Italian and Turkish media are treating it as a calculated snub. La Stampa accused Erdogan of "bad manners" while Turkey's morning daily Sabah claimed Erdogan was "escaping the pope." Erdogan’s Islamist party is based in Turkey’s rural community and many of his supporters are openly hostile to the papal presence. Erdogan is having it both ways by avoiding angering to his electoral base while also having an official excuse to avoid causing offence to the Vatican.

Turkey wrestles with its conscience

On Thursday Turkish prosecutors dropped charges against novelist Elif Safak (pictured), on the first day of her trial for denigrating the national identity in a case monitored by the EU as a benchmark for Turkey's human rights record. The infamous Article 301 of the Turkish penal code makes it an offence to “insult Turkishness”. The offence carries a three year penalty under Turkish law. Shafak was charged because she wrote a best-selling novel called “The Bastard of Istanbul” in which she described Turkey’s 1915 genocide of its Armenian population. In the book one of her characters is an ethnic Armenian says “Turkish butchers” massacred his ancestors.

The EU will include the case in a report on Turkey's progress toward membership that will be published on 8 November. Brussels has welcomed the ruling but an EU spokeswoman said the law used to prosecute Shafak still posed a significant threat to freedom of expression and those who express non-violent opinion. EU member Cyprus has also insisted Turkey recognises it as pre-condition for membership.

Elif Shafak is not the first Turkish novelist to break the taboo about discussing the Armenian genocide. Orhan Pamuk has also fallen foul of Article 301. His crime was one sentence in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger this month when he said 'Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in Turkey. Almost no one dares speak but me, and the nationalists hate me for that.”

The exact number is disputed, but there were somewhere between one and two million mostly Christian Armenians living in what was then the Ottoman Empire at the start of World War One. The Ottomans were an ancient empire on its last legs. Turkey was the Sick Man of Europe. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 resulted in the liberation of many Christian areas of the Balkans from Turkish rule. The Treaty of Berlin that ended the war promised legal protection to the Christian Armenians. This led many Armenians to believe that they too could wrest self-control from the Ottoman government. Under the rule of Sultan Hamid (1876 to 1909) Turkey brutally suppressed minor Armenian revolts. In 1896 Armenian bank robbers raided the HQ of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. In response the Turks massacred tens of thousands of Armenians.

As the First World War approached, the Young Turks seized power in a coup in 1913. Initially they won the support of the Armenians who saw them as a change for the better from the despotic sultanate. Turkey joined the war on the side of the Central Powers but was soundly defeated by the Russians in the 1914-15 battle of Sarikamis. Sarikamis is an Armenian region of the Caucasus. The Turkish leader Enver Pasha blamed the defeat on Armenian rebels attacking Turkish supply routes. He ordered all Armenian recruits in the Ottoman forces to be disarmed, and assigned to labour battalion units. Many were rounded up and executed and the remainder turned into manual slave labourers.

In May 1915, the increasingly hostile government issued new orders which called for the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands Armenians from Anatolia towards concentration camps in what is now Syria and Iraq. Many were tortured and murdered and many more died on the way to the camps. The government justified the deportations on the grounds of illusory armed rebellions in Van and other cities. During the war the British navy blockaded Turkey, including the Turkish Levant. No food was allowed in by sea. The resulting famine in Lebanon and Syria would not have become as deadly as it did had not the Turks commandeered available food supplies and refused to help the starving.

By 1917 fewer than 200,000 Armenians remained in Turkey. Armenians suffered a demographic disaster that shifted the centre of their demographic from the heartland of historical Armenia to the relatively safer eastern regions held by the Russians. Tens of thousands of refugees fled to the Caucasus with the retreating Russian armies, and the cities of Baku and Tbilisi filled with Armenians from Turkey. The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres gave recognition of the Democratic Republic of Armenia but Turkey repudiated the treaty. Armenia and Turkey fought a war which the Turks won. Simultaneously the Red Army invaded Armenia from the north. Turkey and the newly fledged USSR signed the Treaty of Kars and Armenia became a Soviet federation in 1922.

Turkey emerged as the successor state to the Ottoman Empire under the strong secular leadership of Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. It absolved the state from blame of the Armenian "problem" and launched a vigorous campaign of denial of genocide that lasts to this day. The political scientist R J Rummel has estimated that the Young Turks probably murdered at least 743,000 and perhaps as many as 3,204,000 people which included some 1,883,000 Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians. Rummel coined the term democide to describe mass murder by governments. Modern Turkey is still struggling to deal with its democide of the early twentieth century. Writers such as Safak and Pamuk are crucial in the difficult process of exorcising these demons. Repealing Article 301 would be an important next step.

Anzac Day 2006

Today is the 91th anniversary of the Allied landings at Gallipoli, the failed attempt to take Turkey out of the First World War. The Gallipoli peninsula is a place where legend has always been more important than truth since Homer's Iliad tore apart nearby Troy.

During the 1983 America’s Cup, the Australian syndicate was 3-1 down in the race series, when Alan Bond invoked Gallipoli's modern mythology. “We had our backs to the wall there (Gallipoli), and we won that one," Bond said. The interviewer took pains to point out to him that “we” didn’t win that one though Bond's team did come back to win.

Bond is not alone in adapting the myth to his purposes. The Turks themselves also twist it to their purpose. Islamist scholars who lead tours to Gallipoli minimise the role played by the secular military leader Mustapha Kemal, the future Ataturk ("Father of the Turks"). Instead the tell their audiences the campaign was won by Allah and his Turkish martyrs.

The peninsula itself is on the European side of the Dardenelles, the Gibraltar of the eastern Mediterranean. Here the Aegean meets the Sea of Marmara. Further upstream, the Marmara meets the Black Sea at the Bosphorus. A victory at Gallipoli would not only cripple Constantinople but would bring the Russian Black Sea fleet into the war.

In 1915 Constantinople (later Istanbul) was the capital of the 600 year old Ottoman Empire which was on its last legs. At the peak of its power in 1683, the Ottomans and their feared infantry units, the Janissaries, controlled the entire North African coast, all of Europe east of the Danube, the Crimea and much of the Middle East. The next two centuries saw a long slow and painful decline as nationalism rose in the Balkan peninsula and new nations were created. The other great European empires slowly bit away at the rest of its possessions. The Ottoman treasury went bankrupt in 1875 and Tsar Nicholas I called Turkey the Sick Man of Europe.

Internal strife was also tearing the empire apart from the inside. The Young Turks emerged from the Committee of Union and Progress and succeeded in overthrowing the Sultan. Before the First World War, a triumvirate called the Three Pashas were in power. Enver, Djemal and Talat would all meet violent ends in exile after the war, two of them at the hands of assassins in revenge for the Armenian genocide that occurred during the war. Back in 1914, they were courted by both sides and allied with Germany.

The Germans dealt Russia a colossal defeat at Tannenberg early in the war. Russia was threatened by a Turkish advance through the Caucasus and gaining control of the Dardanelles would re-establish western communications with Russia via the Black Sea.

After early salvos from the British Navy, the Turks mined the straits . In March 1915, under the direction of the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, the British and French sent a fleet of 18 ships to force open the strait. Six ships were either sunk or badly damaged by mines in this failed naval attack.

The Army was then sent in to occupy the Gallipoli peninsula to nullify the Turkish guns defending the strait. It was to be a combined French and British operation. The whole of the British empire contributed forces: English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Canadian, Newfoundlanders, Indians, Australians and New Zealanders. The latter two were joined together in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps which was shortened to Anzacs. The cross-eyed War Minister Kitchener appointed his Sudan campaign protégé Sir Ian Hamilton commander of the operation. Hamilton would face formidable opposition in German general Otto Liman Von Sanders and local hero Mustafa Kemal.

The invasion was planned for April 24 but bad weather delayed the landing by 24 hours. The landing spot was on the Aegean side of the peninsula. But the boats dropped the forces at the wrong beach and instead of the wide open beach they were supposed to be at, the invaders ended up in an unnamed cove. They were confronted by a tangle of ravines and spurs and sheer cliff faces that descended from the Sarı Bayır range to the sea. The landing spot finally got a name: Anzac Cove.

The area was lightly defended but combination of the tough terrain and poor communication of orders meant that the British lost the race to the high Quickly roused, Kemal got there first. Positions on the key hill Baby 700 (so named because it was slightly smaller than another 700 feet hill in the area) changed hands several times in the first few days before the Turks secured it for good. The campaign then transformed into the stalemate of trench warfare. The Turks did not have the navy nor the calibre of equipment but the higher ground proved decisive throughout the campaign.

On the southern tip of the peninsula was Cape Helles. This was the site of the second landing of mostly British, Irish and French troops. They suffered massive casualties from machine guns at Seddulbahir fort. Only 11 out of 1,012 Royal Dublin Fusiliers survived the campaign. The few that made it ashore were besieged three days after the landing.

Both sides launched suicidal offensives throughout May but very little ground changed hands. The British brass would not divert heavy artillery from the Western Front that might have wrested the initiative. And so the Dardanelles gridlock resembled the bloody fields of Flanders.

In August, Hamilton launched a second offensive 8km north of Anzac Cove. The leader of this landing at Suvla Bay, Sir Frederick Stopford, was ineffective and botched the landing despite encountering little Turkish resistance. Instead of storming up the mountain, Stopford slept for the night without issuing any orders. Again the Turks won the race for the high ground and Suvla turned into a second defensive stalemate.

Up to now, Hamilton’s sanguine dispatches back to Kitchener concealed the true state of affairs. But the truth was seeping through and the work of journalists Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and Keith Murdoch turned the tide in Whitehall.

Kitchener sacked Hamilton in October and appointed Sir Charles Munro to look at whether they should evacuate. Munro's mind was made up when Bulgaria came into the war on the side of the Central Powers and opened up a new front near Salonika in Greece. This also meant Germany had a land route to supply Turkey with heavy artillery. The writing was on the wall for Gallipoli. Munro recommended evacuation.

Heavy casualties were expected in the evacuation but it was the only truly successful part of the campaign. The army stealthily reduced ranks through December so the Turks wouldn't notice and evacuated the last batch from Anzac Cove during the early hours of December 20, 1915. The last soldiers left Helles in early January. There were no casualties in either evacuation.

The Turks celebrated a great victory. Mustapha Kemal’s star was on the rise and he went on to transform the country into a modern European state in the 1920s. But the Ottoman empire itself was destroyed by Allenby’s armies advancing from Arabia.

In Turkey the Gallipoli campaign, is known as Çanakkale Savaşları. Canakkale (named for the main town on the Asian side of the peninsula) is still feted as a great victory.

But it was also making a huge impact on the other side of the world. Within a few weeks of campaign starting, Ashmead-Bartlett’s vivid and heroic account of the Anzac landing was printed in Australian newspapers. What captured the imagination of the public was the fact the article was particularly favourable to the “thrilling deeds of heroism” of Australian and New Zealand troops. As an immediate result both countries had little trouble finding new volunteers. Both countries sustained enormous casualties which neither had previously experienced in this war or any other. 500 Australians died on the first day. 9,000 died overall. This trauma added to the mystique of the campaign. It was a nationally defining event for country that had existed as a Federation for just 14 years and was still grappling with its dual British and Australian identity. Before Anzac, Australian history was a dull matter “of commerce and cricket, of wool and wickets.” Now, they could say “we know what nations know”. On the first anniversary in 1916 there were already commemoration ceremonies in some parts of Australia despite the ignoble retreat in December. This began the institutionalisation of Anzac Day.

Groups were set up all over Australia and New Zealand which lobbied for the day to be given a ‘sacred’ meaning. The churches and military co-presided at the ceremonies that sprang up to celebrate the day. Legislation set aside the day for solemn remembrance and Anzac Day became a public holiday. But it took on the look of Good Friday “holiday” - which it often followed swiftly in the calendar. Pubs, sporting venues and shops would be closed on the day. April 25 would become the nation’s day of remembrance for all wars and the itinerary of rituals was established. The day is now an uneasy mix of military and religious tradition, both sacred and profane.


Other sources:

Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 2006 "Gallipoli: A Contested Ground Still"

"The Anzac landing"

Moses, John A 2002, The Struggle for Anzac Day 1916-1930 Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society v88 no 1

Carlyon, Les 2001, Gallipoli, Pan Macmillan, Sydney