A previously undisclosed medical report detailing the human cost of the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I has been uncovered 111 years after the battles, offering a rare, data-driven insight into one of the most brutal fronts of the war.
The report was found as part of the studies on the “3rd Corps War Diaries” and has now been published in the 30th issue of Anafarta Journal, according to the Çanakkale Wars Institute Director Utkan Emre Er.
Authored in 1915 by Chief Physician Ali Rıza of the Ottoman 3rd Corps and Northern Group, it covers the most intense phase of the land battles between April 25 and late November 1915 — widely regarded as the bloodiest period of the campaign.
According to the document, a total of 41,471 wounded soldiers were recorded in the sector defended by the 3rd Corps, particularly in the fiercely contested areas of Arıburnu and Conkbayırı.
More than 40,000 of these were evacuated to field dressing stations and hospitals, while 2,549 soldiers who had been rescued from the front lines later died of their wounds in medical facilities.
Er emphasized that the figures highlight not only the scale of battlefield casualties but also the immense struggle that continued in makeshift hospitals and medical tents.
“These numbers clearly show that the Gallipoli epic was not written only in the trenches or underground tunnel warfare, but also in hospital wards where an extraordinary fight for survival took place,” he said.
The report also documents the severity of close combat.
It records that 83 Ottoman soldiers were either killed or severely wounded in bayonet charges — an indication of the brutal, hand-to-hand nature of fighting in the narrow terrain.
The Gallipoli Campaign was a major military operation launched by Allied forces to seize control of the Dardanelles Strait and capture Istanbul, then the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Ottoman forces ultimately repelled the invasion, making Gallipoli a defining moment in Turkish national history.
