What the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) saw more than a century ago on a battlefield thousands of miles from home stands as symbol of friendship now with the nation they fought. Turkish pines are now adorning schools in Australia where grade school students are taught about the blossoming friendship after World War I between Turkish and Australian nations.
It is part of a project to plant pines at 100 schools, ahead of the centenary of the Republic of Turkey. The Friends of Gallipoli association and others dedicated to preserving the memory of World War I veterans and the Turkish-Australian friendship are behind the project supported by the Turkish Consulate in Melbourne. So far, pines have been planted at 20 schools in the state of Victoria.
The pines planted are no ordinary ones. Each seedling is derived from pine cones brought from Turkey to Australia.
Pine cones were first brought to the continent by a lance corporal who fought at the Battle of Lone Pine in Gallipoli, or Gelibolu as Turks called it, in the northwestern Turkish province of Çanakkale. The battle, known as Kanlı Sırt (Bloody Ridge) in Turkey lasted three days, between Aug. 6 and Aug.10, 1915, and was an attempt to stall Ottoman forces from defending other critical positions around the Dardanelles, a gateway for the Allies to reach the crumbling empire’s capital Istanbul. When Anzac troops set foot on the ridge, they come across a lone pine standing in an empty field as all the other trees were felled by Turkish troops for use in trenches. The fierce battle ended with a victory for the Anzac forces, which suffered an estimated loss of more than 2,200 members, while the Turkish side lost 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers, according to varying historical sources.
The planting campaign also teaches students about Turkish-Australian friendship. Dr. Vecihi Başarın, an Australian engineer of Turkish descent who is known for his work on the history of the Anzac campaign, says they wanted to add “a new bridge” between Australians and the Turkish community. “Anzacs and Turks fought each other more than 100 years ago but peace and friendship were born out of this fight. This is something rare in history and we owe this to the famous remarks of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Monday. Atatürk was commander of forces fighting Anzac troops in the World War I campaign and went on to become founding father of the Republic of Turkey. “After having lost their lives in this land, they have become our sons as well,” he famously wrote in a letter in 1934 to mothers of Anzac troops who lost their lives in Gallipoli.
Ron Fleming, head of the Buninyong chapter of the Returned and Services League of Australia, said "lone pine" trees symbolized the togetherness of the two nations. Fleming told AA that soldiers from Buninyong who died in the battle were either buried there or had their names engraved on the Lone Pine Memorial and that these trees were a “living connection” with those soldiers.
Lex Thomson is among the contributors to the campaign. He grew trees from pine cones brought by Anzac troops at his residence in Melbourne and in turn, used the pine cones from those trees for the campaign in which students planted trees. “Trees are being planted so that children can grasp the meaning of the sacrifice people did in World War I,” he said.
The Gallipoli campaign aimed to secure a naval route from the Mediterranean Sea to Istanbul through the Dardanelles and knock the Ottomans out of the war. In April 1915, the Allied forces made their first landings in the area after naval bombardment. It marked the start of a fierce battle that lasted for eight months. More than 44,000 Allied soldiers and 86,000 Ottoman soldiers died. The battlefields and cemeteries at the site in Çanakkale have become a place of pilgrimage for many Australians and New Zealanders who sleep on the beaches until the start of the dawn service every year.
The tragic fate of troops from Australia and New Zealand in the Gallipoli campaign is believed to have inspired the two nations to carve national identities distinct from the British. Every year, Anzac Day is marked as a coming of age for the two nations.
Gallipoli is also considered to be an important turning point in the history of modern Turkey. It was at Gallipoli that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk rose to prominence as a commander of the Turkish forces and went on to lead Turkey’s War of Independence and found the Turkish republic.
