ANKARA
At least 21 heads of state will attend the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Canakkale to be held from April 24 to 25.
Prince Charles, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Iraqi President Fuad Masum, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the President of the Syrian National Coalition Khalid Khoja will attend the anniversary.
Parliamentary speakers, deputy presidents, prime ministers, ministers and ambassadors from several countries will also represent their countries during the anniversary.
Albanian President Bujar Nishani, Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh, Chad President Idriss Deby, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit, Irish President Michael D. Higgins, Montenegro President Filip Vujanovic, the incumbent president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Dervis Eroglu, Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain, Senegalese President Macky Sall, Slovenian President Borut Pahor, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow will also attend the ceremony.
In January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent invitation letters to more than 100 leaders, including Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, to participate in the commemoration of the Battle of Canakkale on April 24.
Sargsyan reportedly denounced Erdogan's invitation as a "short-sighted" attempt to overshadow the 100th anniversary of the 1915 events."
The year 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the battle in the Dardanelles Strait in Canakkale province's district of Gallipoli, at which there was a turnaround in favor of the Turks fighting in World War I against the Allied Forces.
The victory against the Allied Forces in the Dardanelles Strait gave Turkey a massive moral boost that enabled it to wage a war of independence and eventually, in 1923, to form a republic from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, that was led by the Turkish Republic's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
