- This article is about the Turkish town. Gallipoli is also a small city in the province of Lecce in southern Italy.
Gallipoli, called Gelibolu in modern Turkish, is a town in north-western Turkey. The name derives from the Greek Kallipolis, meaning "Beautiful City". It is located on the Gallipoli Peninsula (Gelibolu Yarimadasi), with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east.
In Australia and New Zealand, Gallipoli is the name given to the Allied campaign on the Peninsula during World War I, usually known in Britain as the Dardanelles Campaign and in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale. This was an attempt to push through the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople. On April 25, 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at a small bay at the western end of the Peninsula (today officially called Anzac Cove). The campaign ended in stalemate with the Anzacs being evacuated on December 19, 1915. There were around 180,000 Allied casualties and 220,000 Turkish casualties. This campaign has become a "founding myth" for both Australia and New Zealand, and Anzac Day is still commemorated as a holiday in both countries. Many mementos of the Gallipoli campaign can be seen in the museum at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia.
The Gallipoli campaign also gave an important boost to the career of Mustafa Kemal, a little known army commander who exceeded his authority and contravened orders in order to halt the Allied advance and eventually drive them back. Mustafa Kemal, who eventually changed his name to Kemal Atatürk, became the founder of the modern Turkish state after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
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