The idea that Australia was born as a nation on Gallipoli's shores is now deeply cemented in our history books and national psyche.

A large part of the people who inhabited it were Armenians - it had once been at the heart of a great Armenian empire. Today there are almost none. The only two buildings still standing there are mosques. Of the dozen or so churches, there is no trace.

Candidate Barack Obama repeatedly promised he'd call the almost century-old massacre of Armenians in Turkey a genocide. President Obama twice now has refused to do so.

Armenian Genocide day commemorates the 24 April 1915 commencement of the Turkish Armenian Genocide in which 1.5 million Armenians were systematically murdered by the Turks in the period 1915-1923.

Between 1915 and 1918, some 800,000 to 1.5 million people were murdered in what is now eastern Turkey, or died on death marches in the northern Syrian desert. It was one of the first genocides of the 20th century.