Submitted by Paul Daley on
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.
Related: Australian War Memorial: the remarkable rise and rise of the nation's secular shrine
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.
Related: Anzac Cove and Gallipoli: then and now – interactive
Related: A nurse’s letter from Gallipoli: from the archive, 27 July 1915
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