There is no hard historical evidence that #Kemal ever uttered the affectionate words to the #Anzac mothers that are the foundation of the Special relationship between #Turkey and #Australia.
In 1953, one of #Kemal’s fellow war criminals, one Sükrü Kaya, alleged to a state Turkish newspaper that #Kemal passed a version of these words on to a British delegation to #Gallipoli, three years before #Kemal’s death in 1937. No evidence of that exchange has ever emerged. In around 1968, Alan Campbell – an original #Anzac from #Gallipoli – met an elderly Turkish gent at Gallipoli, who passed on the words as reported by Kaya.
Campbell was duly impressed and ultimately had his own version (with what must be his own added words ‘the Johnnies and the Mehmets’ lying ‘side by side’). He had his version (the one now on the wall opposite the #Australian #War #Memorial) inscribed in a Brisbane RSL. It appears that no serious attempt at fact-checking their historical veracity had ever been undertaken.
The words came to the attention of Bob #Hawke and he took a personal interest. #Hawke and his delegates engaged with the #Turks, who offered to rename #Ariburnu as ‘#Anzac Cove’, provided we erect a statue of #Kemal in our #War Memorial. The AWM baulked at a statue, but the bas-relief and memorial with the words to the #Anzac mothers on Anzac #Parade emerged as the compromise.
By buying into a construct that featured theses affectionate words to the #Anzac mothers and embracing #Kemal as a noble foe with the words to the #Anzac mothers and bas-reliefs of #Kemal on memorial walls in #Canberra, #Wellington and #Anzac Cove, successive #Australian governments – beginning with Bob Hawke – have become complicit in the #Turkish lie that #Kemal began.
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