Gallipoli and evolving commemoration - the new Turkish perspective | Seminars 2026

Language of Presentation: English

Speaker: Assist. Prof Vlasis Vlasidis

Synopsis

The Gallipoli campaign is considered among the military failures of the British and French during World War I. It left a very strong imprint on the memory of the British, Australians and New Zealanders. Already from the interwar period hundreds of veterans took cruises to visit the battlefields and their cemeteries, built by the Imperial War Graves Commissions (IWGC). At the end of the 20th century there were tens of thousands of British, Australians and New Zealanders who participated in Anzac Day and the parade at Canakkale. The Turks had their own monuments and their own ceremonies, on different dates. There was space for everyone. In the most recent decade the Erdogan regime has changed both the landscape and the events format, by building gigantic museums for every major battle and has surrounded all the British and ANZAC memorials and cemeteries with replicas of monuments with the Mustafa Kemal figure and information signs thus reducing the presence of the ANZAC and the British in the field. All this has created negative feelings among the CWGC authorities and veterans' associations, resulting in reduced visitor numbers.

Bio

Vlasis Vlasidis studied history at the School of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He completed his graduate studies and wrote his dissertation at the same school. He has received numerous scholarships, the most significant of which was from the German Marshall Fund. He has published many articles in academic journals on the interwar period. He is a member of the editorial team at www.macedonian-heritage.gr.

He is a research associate at the Macedonian News Agency and teaches the history of the Balkan media in the Department of Balkan Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His main research interests are Media Studies, Mass Communication, New Media, Media History in Greece and the Balkans, Propaganda, News Agencies, Cold War, Cold War Propaganda, Cultural Industries, Migration and the Media, Military cemeteries. He is fluent in Greek, English, French, German and Bulgarian.
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