Higgins attends Gallipoli commemoration

President Michael D Higgins yesterday joined Britain’s Prince Charles and Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan at commemorations to mark the 100th anniversary of the First World War battle on the Gallipoli peninsula.

“Tens of thousands of youths buried their futures in this land,” president Tayyip Erdogan told an international ceremony at the main Turkish memorial on the peninsula.

The fighting in Gallipoli, between April 1915 and January 1916, is estimated to have cost more than 130,000 lives on all sides, including 4,000 Irishmen fighting in Irish regiments, as well as in other British regiments and those from the various empire nations.