Today is a
day of remembrance of tragic glories past. It is increasingly also a day of
moral ambiguity.
When I
first celebrated ANZAC Day as a little boy, it was a moment to pause to glorify
war, encounter moving rituals and to skate over anything other than ancestor
worship. The ANZAC Day veterans, liberally sprinkled with amputees, were
acclaimed for a day and their invasion of Turkey deemed valiant.
Then
Vietnam killed the moment. ANZAC Day went into seemingly terminal decline. It was poorly attended and militarism in
general seen for the tragic folly it inevitably is. And so it flew under most Australians’ radar
through the seventies and eighties.
I next bumped
into ANZAC Day was travelling to Gallipoli as my wife and I bummed around the
world. Then Australians visited
Gallipoli in tiny numbers. We only went because her grandfather had a military post
named after him and the family wanted to see what if anything was there. Well there was a mighty edifice (SEE PHOTO BELOW) notwithstanding that the family’s name was misspelt and the Post was combined
with Courtney’s Post. Indeed my
grandfather lived under the Ottoman Empire (which he detested) and it is
foreseeable that if he had not made his way into Australia, he would have been
taking pot shots at Beth’s grandfather.
Oh, the ironies of life.
It was
there I first confronted the notion that the Australians were invaders. The
locals were generous and welcoming but made it clear that their ancestors were attacked
and died in far greater numbers. It was the first time I even contemplated this
perspective and I felt repentant accordingly.
I returned
and befriended Resit, a lovely Turkish boy. He was charming about Gallipoli and
we agreed it was a tragic mistake and talked more about our circumcision
experiences (BTW his was positive and mine was nothing as at 8 days, I “know
nothing”).
And so we
come to today and ANZAC Day is a very different place. The mojo has returned. Back packers flood the
Peninsula. ANZAC Day is huge and the
celebration has morphed through the religious ritual of football to form a
central and inspiring day in the calendar.
Our multiculturalism informs us of the fact that there were good people
on the other side and both Turks and Ozzies celebrate a long lost fiasco
without acrimony. The Turkish community has a sub branch of the RSL!
ANZAC Day though is changing too in the Islamic world. It is being argued in some quarters that it
is part of the centuries old Christian Crusade against Muslims. Remember that the Turks were led by Ataturk,
the first President in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The man was secular, his world view Western
and his mantra was patriotic not religious. At the time of the invasion, he was
representing the Ottoman Empire and that Empire was aligned with the Christian
Austro Hungarian Empire and the equally Christian Germany. Sides were chosen by various Empires on the
basis of geopolitical advantage not belief.
Those Empires that lost were broken up. It was a battle of Empires at play and faith was
irrelevant.
Any attempt
by modern Islam to diminish the role of the secular Ataturk flies in the face
of the facts. Any attempt by the Islamic world to portray the Turkey as the
latest iteration of the Crusades is misleading. The local Turks were innocent
victims but their faith had nought to do with it.
Whilst the
Gallipoli locals were victims, the Ottoman Empire was no innocent. Just ask the
survivors of the Pontian Greek Genocide of (1914-1923) or the Armenian Genocide
of the same era. One cannot easily portray the Ottoman Caliphate as yet another
innocent victim of the Crusading West.
And in
Australia, the marginal Hizb ut Tahrir group condemns the invasion
as an anti Islamic invasion of the Ottoman Caliphate. They are roundly
condemned by the Turkish Sub Branch of the RSL who rightly say that soldiers
died representing their communities.
In my life, ANZAC Day has constantly evolved.
Who could have guessed that simple message of the moral
rightness of blind patriotism I received as child would evolve so much over
time. Now layers imposed by immigration and cultural warfare battle anew to
capture the hearts and minds. The moral
equation changes with each revision. The
ANZACs were once strong strapping heroes possessing great moral grandeur. Then,
in the seventies they became the morally flawed representatives of militarism and
imperialism. Now in the twenty first century in Australia they represent
another sporting contest that we must celebrate. And in some pockets of the Islamic world, they
are incorrectly portrayed as evil Crusaders.
ANZAC Day will never
stand still and its moral equation never avoid being hijacked by those who want
to profit by revising history. Lest we
forget the real tragedy - Dueling Empires imposed suffering and death upon their
expendable boys.
What is your view? Is ANZAC Day
What is your view? Is ANZAC Day
- a sacred secular moment?
- a tired old anachronism?
- a Christian Crusading moment of triumphalism over Islam?
- an annual rite when the rituals of the military are mooshed together with the rituals of footy?
Over to you and to inspire you is a picture of the misspelt Steel's Post named after my grandfather in law Tom Steel.