The Gallipoli campaign became an event of great importance to the governments of Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. Today the area is the site of several military cemetaries and memorials, maintained by agreements between those governments. There on those graveyards, Turks, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, British, French rest side by side.
In 1934 Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk," commander of Turkish forces on Gallipoli and then-president of the modern Turkish Republic, dedicated a memorial for Anzac Cove. It read:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours,
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
