Russian appeal for help

 

On 2 January 1915, the British Government received an urgent appeal from the Commander of the Russian armies, Grand Duke Nicholas, asked the United Kingdom for help. Russia was fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Caucasus Campaign. Nicholas hoped that British action against the Turks would relieve pressure on Russian forces in Armenia.

The British agreed to help. Besides this, British strategists had for many years before the war believed that the best defence of Egypt and the Suez Canal was an attack on Türkiye.

They targeted the Dardanelles, strategically located between the Mediterranean and Black seas.

 

​​The attack on Gallipoli was one of the more imaginative strategies of World War I.

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At the start of the war, the German Imperial Army had delivered a crushing blow to Russia at the Battle of Tannenberg and had been forced eastwards. The Russians were threatened by a Turkish advance through the Caucasus. Thus Russia appealed to their allies for help.

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Gaining control of the narrow straits of the Dardanelles leading to the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul) would:

• re-establish communications with Russia

• open a shipping route to the Mediterranean to release merchant ships locked in the Black Sea by Türkiye

 

​Thus the dice were cast & the plan evolved from that point.