Non-Muslim Ottomans of the Gallipoli campaign
This project aims at collecting the stories of the non Muslim soldiers who fought for the Ottoman army in Gallipoli in 1915 and a project launch multimedia seminar by Selma Melekyan, an independent researcher and descendant of an Armenian soldier for the Ottoman army in Gallipoli.
The Gallipoli rhetoric in Australia emphasizes the friendship of the ANZACs and Turks. The Ottoman Empire, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious empire had been conscripting non-Muslims since 1837 and many Jews, Greeks, Armenians and others fought for their empire in WWI.
The project will attract attention from the wider Australian public by shedding light on a lesser known facet of the Gallipoli campaign. This unique project aims at discovering the shared history of the diverse communities of the Ottoman Empire and uniting their Australian descendants around it.
The wider Australian community will be engaged in the Project with the disclosure of the unknown facets of the Great War. The project intends to build bridges among the descendants of the diverse communities of the Ottoman Empire, promote greater awareness within the Australian civil society about a little known facet of the Great War vital to the formation of both the Turkish and Australian identities.