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Tens of thousands gather at Gallipoli for Anzac Day

Tens of thousands have gathered at Gallipoli for the Anzac Day services, where security concerns are matched by a huge military and police operation.

Around 10,500 Australians and Kiwis have travelled to Turkey to commemorate a disastrous loss for the Allied forces who tried to invade this stony strip of land a century ago.


Any geographic difficulties posed by the Gallipoli peninsula, however, are only amplified by the enormous security machine that squeezed tighter in recent days and now has clamped shut on Anzac Eve.


On duty are nearly 4000 Turkish Jandarma - armed military law enforcement officers - plus police, soldiers and private security guards.

Adding another layer are the unsmiling, black-suited government security men - men with a job to do and a firm grip on the words "no" and "impossible".

They are watching over the visit on Friday of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to attend a memorial service to fallen Turk heroes at the monolithic Canakkale Martyrs Memorial.

The steel security curtain extends far beyond the national park where the famous Gallipoli cemeteries are: the nearby ferry port towns of Eceabat and Kilitbahir are in complete lockdown.

Police cars are on every corner, armed troops walk the streets and watch from rooftops. Fighter planes scream past high overhead.

When the patriotic bikers of the Anatolian Tigers Motorcycle Club thunder into Eceabat, Turkish flags waving, they silence their thundering Harleys and wait when they hit the police roadblock.

IN PICTURES: Click through to see Anzac Day commemorations from around the world. Photo: AAP

It comes as record crowds have come together to remember the Gallipoli landings in Australia.

In Canberra by the flicker of candles a record 120,000 people came together at the war memorial to remember to the fallen diggers, that is a third of Canberra's population.

Around 30,000 people crowded into Martin Place in Sydney at the moving dawn service and thousands also gathered in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

Australian Federal Police officers have been on the ground in Turkey for months, while a no-fly zone is in place and all non-naval vessels will be stopped from approaching the coast.

The Australian and Kiwi tourists travelling onto the peninsula on Friday ahead of the Anzac Day dawn service will face multiple separate security checks before they take their seats in the three-sided Australian Commemorative Site above North Beach.

Security forces swept through on a final check before hundreds of buses swing in with their excited pilgrim passengers.

By 4am there will be no space to spare as people wait shoulder-to-shoulder in freezing cold for the 5.30am service.

Security has been a huge issue for this Anzac event, believed to be the largest gathering of English-speaking people in a non English-speaking country anywhere in the world.

At every news conference leading up to Anzac Day, media have asked about security concerns.

Out among the battlefield cemeteries, feelings have been mixed: one woman says she feels completely safe, another man says he hid a story about recent terror attacks in Istanbul from his wife to stop her worrying.

Australia's Gallipoli services director Tim Evans has repeatedly said the peninsula will be one of the safest places to be in Turkey on Anzac Day.

When people have their hearts and minds fixed firmly on the dawn service, it's hoped no one will have to notice the machinery that has made all this possible.