The Struggle between Nationalist and Jihadist Narratives of Gallipoli, 1915–2015

Abstract

There have been a number of milestones in the (re-)writing of the history of the Gallipoli campaign (1915). First, the dominant Turkish nationalist historiography ‘Turkified’ the victory of the Ottoman Imperial Army. Narratives of the 1930s were also constructed in such a way that the presence of Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) was used as a bridge to attach the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 to the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922). In later years, Islamist poets such as Mehmet Akif wrote poems presenting the campaign as a kind of ‘Resistance of Islam against the Infidel’. However, it was not until the mid-1990s that the Gallipoli campaign came to be framed as an ‘Invasion of Crusaders into the House of Islam’. This new narrative reflects a jihadist revision. In this article, these trends will be analysed within the framework of operations of political power in both civil society and the state.

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“…In 2002, the AKP came to power, with an open admiration toward Ersoy and his version of Muslim martyrdom during the Gallipoli campaign. Islamist mobilization regarding Gallipoli appeared in the secular nationalist press in 2004 (Aktar 2020, 219). This evocation of Islamist interpretation of Gallipolu led to a serious backlash as a response from the secular nationalist cultural elite in the form of Tolga Örnek’s Gallipoli (2005), a docudrama with Jeremy Irons as the narrator.…”

“…As part of this process, the military history of World War I was Turkified and the Ottoman Imperial Army ( Osmanlı Ordu-yi Hümayunu ) was converted into the Turkish Army ( Türk Ordusu ) by historians. Subsequently, all ethnic groups, such as Kurds, Arabs, Georgians, and non-Muslim minorities, who were drafted into the army in 1914 were obliterated from this version of history writing (Aktar 2020, 215).…”