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The campaign began with a failed naval attack by British and French ships on the Dardanelles Straits in February-March 1915. Bad luck meant that the Allied expedition was discovered by the Turks. The mined the Dardanelles as the allies approached and they destroyed several vessels. The Turks alerted by the naval attack began to pour reinforcements into the area. In the wake of the failed naval attack, preparations began for large-scale troop landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. The British War Secretary Lord Kitchener appointed General Ian Hamilton as commander of British forces for the operation. Hamilton had under his command, a very diverse army, he had soldiers and marines, from Australia, New Zealand, and the French colonies along with British Regiments. The allies assembled for the invasion on the Greek island of Lemnos. The Turks boosted their defences, in reality, the defence of the Dardanelles was conduct by the German general Liman von Sanders. He predicted that the allies would launch an amphibious operation and he placed the troops at the points in the Dardanelles Strait. He advised the Ottoman High Command to station Ottoman troops along the shores of the Straits, one point he selected was the Gallipoli peninsula<ref> Laffin, John. Damn the Dardanelles! The Story of Gallipoli (London, Osprey, 1980), p. 68</ref>. This was to prove correct and it was this narrow strip of land jutting into the sea that was the allies prime objective <ref> Haythornthwaite, p. 145 </ref>. On the 25th of April, 1915, the Allies landed their forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Despite suffering heavy casualties, they managed to establish two beachheads. The first was at Helles on the southern of the Peninsula. The other beachhead was at Gaba Tepe that faced the Aegean Sea. Many Anzacs landed her, so many that it came to be called Anzac Cove. The Turks proved to be stubborn fighters and fought for every inch of the Peninsula <ref> Laffin, p. 121</ref>.
After establishing their beachhead, Allies made little progress. The Turks sent troops from other fronts to join the battle. There was a bloody stalemate and thousands of men on both sides died. Both sides fought heroically and often fought to the death <ref> Haythornthwaite, p. 119 </ref>. The Allies made landed more troops on the 6th of August at Sulva Bay. This coincided with an attempt of the Anzacs to break out of their beachhead at Anzac Cove. The amphibious landings at Sulva Bay caught the Turks by surprise and they met little or no opposition. However, the Allied commanders did not press home their advantage and the dug in, rather than advance and this allowed the Turks, under their commander Mustafa Kemal, to reorganise and counterattack. Sulva Bay was probably the best chance that the Allies had of defeating the Turks at Gallipoli<ref> Keegan, p. 156</ref>.
==Outcome of the Campaign==
As the months wore on and as Allied casualties steadily mounted in the Gallipoli Campaign, Churchill, and Hamilton, asked the British High Command to ask for up 100,000 men. The Secretary of War could only afford some 25,0000 men. Hamilton and Churchill wanted to continue the fight. However, as the operation had become a stalemate, the British government decided to end the operation. Hamilton was opposed to any evacuation as it could lead to massive casualties. He was replaced by Sir Charles Monroe, and he began plans for an evacuation <ref> Strachan, Hew. The First World War: To Arms I. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 113</ref>. He oversaw the evacuation of over 100,000 troops. The evacuation took place between December and January 1915-1916. The evacuation was carried out in an orderly fashion with only limited casualties. Exact figures are unknown but it seems that some 46,000 allied troops died and almost 180,000 were wounded out of a total force of just under half-a-million men. The Turks suffered rather more casualties with some 65,000 killed and 200,000 wounded<ref> Strachan, p. 113</ref>.
==Reasons for Failure==
The Allies were stunned by the failure of the Gallipoli operation. It led to the resignation of Winston Churchill and almost the end of his political career. The campaign was poorly planned and even under-resourced. The commander at Gallipoli, Hamilton, had only five divisions and they had had very little time to train together and this led to a degree of confusion. This reduced the likelihood of success at Gallipoli <ref> Keegan, p. 215</ref>. It is normally believed that an attack force had to have a clear superiority in numbers and this was not the case at Gallipoli. Then there was the issue of geography and terrain. The terrain was such that it slowed down the landings and the Allies subsequent attempts to advance inland. This is indicated in the observations of many Australian officers who frequently ‘complained about the choice of the battlefield’ <ref> Bean, Charles The Story of ANZAC from the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign, May 4, 1915. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 I (11th ed.) (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941), p. 67, 89</ref>. There were also severe logistical problems and they were not resolved until much later in the campaign, with the recruitment of porters and workmen from Malta and Egypt. The Allies had failed to anticipate that the Turks would be able to fire on them when they were landing and this meant that they did not seize their objectives early on during the campaign. Then there was the strategy adopted by Sanders, he refused to adopt a rigid system of defence and instead stressed mobility. He split his forces into three groups in order to quickly respond to any landing. Sanders then recommended that the Turkish forces built defences on the heights surrounding the allied beachheads and this meant that the allies could not break advance inland. However, if the German had listened to Colonel Kemal, (later Ataturk) who commanded the 19th Division, the allies could have been decimated. The future founder of Modern Turkey had predicted the exact areas where the allies would land. Another factor in the failure of the Allies at Gallipoli was a lack of good intelligence. More than one Allied commander complained that they were unsure of what the ‘situation was on the ground’ <ref> Bean, p. 119</ref>. The allies did have one chance to grasp some advantage from the Gallipoli landings and that was at Sulva Bay, if the Generals had been more aggressive, they could have altered the battle in their favour. Then there were the western allies continued underestimation of the Turks. The Ottomans had been heavily defeated in many Balkan Wars and it was assumed that they would flee at the sight of the superior western navies and armies. A sense of western superiority meant that the Allies failed to recognize that the capabilities of the Turks <ref> Erickson, Edward (2001b). "Strength Against Weakness: Ottoman Military Effectiveness at Gallipoli, 1915". The Journal of Military History 65: 981–1012</reref>.
[[File: Gallipoli 3.jpg|thumbnail|200px|Ottoman Machine gun]]
