Gallipoli

views updated May 23 2018

Gallipoli a major campaign of the First World War which took place on the Gallipoli peninsula, on the European side of the Dardanelles, in 1915–16.

In early 1915, after a naval attempt to force the Dardanelles had failed, the Allies (with heavy involvement of troops from Australia and New Zealand) invaded the peninsula, hoping to remove Turkey from the war and open supply lines to Russia's Black Sea ports. The campaign reached stalemate and became bogged down in trench warfare. After each side had suffered a quarter of a million casualties, the Allies evacuated the peninsula without further loss in January 1916.

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