TRYST with Turkey

I AM STARING INTO THE turquoise waters of Dardanelles, the strait that connects the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. My car and I are on a ferry across the waterbody, from Çanakkale to the Gallipoli Peninsula. Today, the waters of these narrows are peaceful and sublime, but in 1915 this was a war theatre, playing out a long and bloody campaign that caused half a million casualties.

Eager to beat the stalemate on the western front that had already left a million men dead, Winston Churchill, serving as the First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of the First World War, suggested an attack on Istanbul through Dardanelles. This would clear the way for supplies to Russia from the Mediterranean Sea through the Bosporus and across the Black Sea. With his usual pompousness and scant regard for the prowess and bravery of people who were not white, Churchill gravely underestimated the resilience and determination of the Turks to protect their homeland. He had disregarded the Ottoman Empire as ‘the sick man of Europe’, but the Allies’ navy, the British, and the ANZAC troops involved in the campaign were in for a cruel shock. Mines destroyed warships, and the troops who landed on the