Every Anzac Day we tell the story of the men in the boats. This year, we're telling the story of the men on the cliffs above them.

On April 25th, 1915, Deputy Officer Muharrem stood in a shallow trench above a small cove on the Gallipoli coast and watched 4000 Australian soldiers rowing toward him through the darkness. He had 160 men to stop them. No reinforcements. No artillery. No orders. Behind him, the German general commanding the Turkish army had galloped off to the wrong end of the peninsula, chasing a landing that didn't exist. The chain of command had collapsed. Muharrem was on his own.

What happened next is one of the most remarkable stories of the entire Gallipoli campaign. Two Turkish colonels who didn't wait for permission to act. A desperate forced march across an open plain under naval gunfire. A single field gun manhandled onto a ridge by its exhausted crew. And a bluff that stopped the Anzacs from winning the day.

"The bastards will give us a go after all," said Lance Corporal George Mitchell, as the first Turkish bullets hit the water around his boat.

"I was very frightened," said Turkish Private Adil Sahin, shaken awake by a sentry as the boats appeared below him. "We didn't know anything about this invasion."

Two armies. Two perspectives. One dawn that decided the fate of the entire campaign.

Episode Length: 40 minutes

Features: First-person accounts from Turkish defenders including Captain Faik, Private Adil Sahin and Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal; Australian voices from Charles Bean's Official History and Bill Gammage's The Broken Years; and material drawn from Mat McLachlan's book Krithia: The Forgotten Anzac Battle of Gallipoli (Hachette, 2024).

Presenter: Mat McLachlan

Producer: Jess Stebnicki

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Ep286: Gallipoli - The Turkish Perspective