Dominic Sandbrook

A lot of them are barely trained at all.

They don't have enough guns.

Their officers have no experience with this kind of operation.

Basically, because nobody has any experience with this kind of operation.

It hasn't really been done before.

I mean, the more you go on, the madder the whole scheme seems.

But the rationale for it, obviously, is they say, yeah, but all that doesn't matter because it's only the Turks.

So as soon as we get ashore, the Turks will undoubtedly run away.

Well, this brings us to Johnny Turk, as the Tommies and the Anzacs called him.

So...

There's obviously a massive sense of racial superiority that underlies all this.

I mean, the Turks, the Ottomans, are not a joke at all.

They are battle-hardened.

They have just fought two Balkan wars, and they fought the Italians in Libya.

This time, they will be fighting very clearly in defence of their native land, for their native soil.

The idea that they're just going to run away is laughable.

and they have been very busy so this german guy otto lehman von sanders he has been modernizing the ottoman army and he has now been moved specifically to the dartnells and told

Take charge of the Fifth Army.

The Ottoman Fifth Army is going to defend the Straits from these blokes.

And Lehman has been given 200,000 men.