Words likening Australia’s dead ‘Johnnies’ to Ottoman ‘Mehmets’ disappear as 1985 Gallipoli monument is restored
The Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has removed from a revered Anzac Cove memorial the familiar words attributed to Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, likening Australia’s dead “Johnnies” to Ottoman “Mehmets” and welcoming them to rest in his country’s soil.
The renovation of the 1985 monument has heightened suspicions in Australia and Turkey that the refurbished memorial could reflect a growing Islamist interpretation by the Erdoğan administration of Australia’s part in the 1915 British-commanded Anzac invasion of – and later retreat from – Gallipoli.
The near demolition of the monument bearing Atatürk’s words, which began in mid to late May, is part of a process of “restoration” of all Turkish memorials and epitaphs on the Gallipoli peninsula. But sources in Australia and Turkey believe the motivations behind the restorations could be in part political and are likely to reflect Turkey’s greater emphasis on religion in history and culture under Erdoğan.
Australian and Turkish sources, including historians in both countries, believe that when the restoration is complete the sentiments on the Anzac Cove Atatürk memorial may be markedly different.
While the precise words attributed to Atatürk – also inscribed on monuments in Australia and New Zealand – are most likely not those of the Turkish Gallipoli commander and first president of the republic, they have been afforded a special place in Anzac mythology and in close diplomatic relations between Canberra and Ankara.
They have been agreed to by Turkish and Australian governments, and have offered comfort to generations of descendants of the 8,000-plus Australian Anzacs buried at Gallipoli.
Until the words were demolished from the memorial in mid to late May, the Ari Burnu monument read:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
