Turkish and British literary representations of the Gallipoli Campaign

Bostanbas, Ozge (2018) Turkish and British literary representations of the Gallipoli Campaign. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

The study of the literature of the Gallipoli campaign has mostly been insular. Comparative literary criticism so far has either focused on Gallipoli as a Turkish and Australian nation-building experience or even more narrowly focused mostly on the perspectives of Australia and New Zealand. This thesis attempts to redress the balance, by undertaking a comparative study of literary representations of British and Turkish writings of Gallipoli. It does not include the experience of other nations that participated the Gallipoli campaign due to the limitations of a PhD thesis, but covers and illustrates as wide a range as possible the ways the Gallipoli experience could be met and interpreted in written works of both civilians and combatants. Not only does it bring both famous and little known writers to the fore from both sides, but also, by comparing them, it questions prejudices derived from any possible propaganda intent, since even the most innocent forms of wartime propaganda are likely to betray particular interpretations of history as well as having documentary value. Examining the similar and distinct ways in which British and Turkish writers developed and expressed their responses to the Gallipoli campaign, the thesis explores the ways in which the campaign intersected with issues of identity and the ways in which these writers interrogated nationhood, personal and national discourses of identity as well as critiquing and contributing to state propaganda.

To most people in Turkey the perspectives of British soldiers are an unknown quantity and they are only vaguely referred to in the Ottoman-Turkish writings, with the exception of stereotypical representations of the vilified enemy in war writings. Similarly to most people in Britain, the Ottoman-Turkish experience of Gallipoli has been an obscure case, although Ottoman-Turkish soldiers were a more familiar topic in British writings of Gallipoli. For example, it is impossible to find in the writings of Aubrey Herbert anything which could be described as anti-Ottoman or anti-Turkish, whilst in the Ottoman-Turkish writings we are not likely to find any form of sympathy towards the 4 Allied Powers. The comparison of British and Turkish literary representations illustrate that the writings of Gallipoli perpetuate many myths about the First World War, yet at the same time often break free of the stereotypes one would associate with war literature.

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