Gallipoli

Gallipoli is the Italian form of the Greek name Καλλίπολις (Kallípolis), meaning 'beautiful city',[2] the original name of the modern town of Gelibolu.

In antiquity, the peninsula was known as the Thracian Chersonese (Ancient Greek: Θρακικὴ Χερσόνησος, romanized: Thrakiké Chersónesos; Latin: Chersonesus Thracica).

In antiquity, it was protected by the Long Wall,[3][4][5][6] a defensive structure built across the narrowest part of the peninsula near the ancient city of Agora.

It was the location of several prominent towns, including Cardia, Pactya, Callipolis (Gallipoli), Alopeconnesus (Ἀλωπεκόννησος), Sestos, Madytos, and Elaeus.

According to Herodotus, the Thracian tribe of Dolonci (Δόλογκοι) (or 'barbarians' according to Cornelius Nepos) held possession of the peninsula before Greek colonizers arrived.

During the 4th century BC, the Thracian Chersonese became the focus of a bitter territorial dispute between Athens and Macedon, whose king Philip II sought its possession.

This alarmed the Greeks and prompted them to seek the aid of the Romans, who conquered the Thracian Chersonese, which they gave to their ally Eumenes II of Pergamon in 188 BC.

In the 19th century, Gallipoli (Ottoman Turkish: گلیبولو, Gelibolu) was a district (kaymakamlik) in the Vilayet of Adrianople, with about thirty thousand inhabitants: comprising Greeks, Turks, Armenians and Jews.

[11] Gallipoli became a major encampment for British and French forces in 1854 during the Crimean War, and the harbour was also a stopping-off point between the western Mediterranean and Istanbul (formerly Constantinople).

[12][13] In March 1854 British and French engineers constructed an 11.5 km (7.1 mi) line of defence to protect the peninsula from a possible Russian attack and secure control of the route to the Mediterranean Sea.

[14]: 414 During the First Balkan War, the 1913 Battle of Bulair and several minor skirmishes took place where the Ottoman army fought in the Greek villages near Gallipoli".

[15][16][17] The Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars mention destruction and massacres in the area by the Ottoman army against Greek and Bulgarian population.

On the Allied side, one of the promoters of the expedition was Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, whose bullish optimism caused damage to his reputation that took years to repair.

Prior to the Allied landings in April 1915,[23] the Ottoman Empire deported Greek residents from Gallipoli and the surrounding region and from the islands in the sea of Marmara, to the interior where they were at the mercy of hostile Turks.

In 1920, after the defeat of the Russian White army of General Pyotr Wrangel, a significant number of émigré soldiers and their families evacuated to Gallipoli from the Crimean Peninsula.