Turkey Pays Homage to Allied 'Heroism' at Gallipoli
Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu paid homage Thursday to the "heroism" of Allied troops who lost to forces of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago at the battle of Gallipoli.
"It was an epic achievement by your ancestors and ours a hundred years ago that has not been forgotten," Davutoglu said at a symbolic "summit for peace" in Istanbul to mark the start of the conflict in April 1915.
"The soldiers fought at Canakkale (Dardanelles) with heroism and fell with the same heroism," he added.
The Gallipoli campaign began on April 25, 1915. It ended in defeat for Allied forces, and with more than 100,000 killed.
More than 11,000 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) soldiers lost their lives on the battleground, which is now part of Turkey.
"We made war a hundred years ago, but here we are gathered to build peace together, by rejecting the rhetoric of hatred," the Turkish leader said.
"Let us show the new generations that a war can lead to peace."
Twenty world leaders attended the memorial event. On Friday they are due to visit the banks of the Dardanelles strait.
Among them was Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand, whose Anzac fighters helped forge their countries' national identities.
Anzac Day remains a day of remembrance in both countries and is marked on April 25.
The leaders also remembered the Ottoman soldiers who died during the nine-month battle during World War I.
It ended in a costly defeat for the Allies after nine months of fighting along the 80-kilometer-long (50-mile-long) peninsula, but was seen as a founding moment for the modern nations of Australia, New Zealand and Turkey.
A series of national commemorations are planned, including the Dawn Service organized by Australia and New Zealand in the early hours of April 25, to mark the moment that the Allied forces disembarked a century ago.
The memorials are taking place at the same time as the world recalls the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces.
The Armenian Church on Thursday held a ceremony making saints of up to 1.5 million Armenians massacred by Ottoman forces as tensions over Turkey's refusal to recognize the killings as genocide reached boiling point.
Ex-Soviet Armenia and the huge Armenian diaspora worldwide have battled for decades to get the World War I massacres at the hands of Ottoman forces between 1915 and 1917 recognized as a targeted genocide.
But modern Turkey -- founded after the Ottoman Empire collapsed -- has refused to do so, and relations remain frozen to this day.
Source: Agence France Presse
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