Turkey joined forces with the Austro-Germans in November, 1914, and attacked Russia and invaded Egyptian territory. Far more important than any of the Turkish operations, however, was the attempt of England and France, in 1915, to force the passage of the Dardanelles, so as to take much needed supplies of arms and ammunition to Russia and in turn enable her to export the enormous stocks of wheat which had piled up at her Black Sea ports.
EGYPTIAN OBELISK, CONSTANTINOPLE
This Obelisk from Thebes, of rose colored granite, sixty feet high, was transported hither by Theodosius the Great, A. D. 390-395, and shows traces of bas-reliefs of that date, and Egyptian hieroglyphs thirty centuries old.
A combined English and French fleet, therefore, attempted to force the passage of the Dardanelles, battering at the Turkish forts from February 21 to March 18, when they attempted to force the Narrows, [577] but were repulsed, with the loss of the British battleships Irresistible and Ocean, and the French battleships Bouvet and Gaulois, in addition to serious injury to a number of other warships engaged.
YILDIZ PALACE AND THE BEAUTIFUL HAMIDIEH MOSQUE,
in the Beshiktash suburb, some distance north of Galata. The present Sultan resides in the Palace of Yildiz.
A joint land and sea expedition was subsequently sent to accomplish what the fleets had failed to achieve.
The most desperate fighting continued there from the beginning of May. The allies employed British and French regulars—the famous Foreign Legion of France, British colonials from Australia and New Zealand, and troops from Egypt, the Soudan and North Africa—but they failed to capture the summits of the hills that command the Narrows and the great Turkish forts.