generally not well known or understood during the war. In Britain, the public thought of it as a minor operation, a waste of precious resources which would be better spent on the Western Front, while the peoples of India were more interested in the Mesopotamian campaign and the occupation of Baghdad. Australia did not have a war correspondent in the area until Captain Frank Hurley, the first Australian Official Photographer, arrived in August 1917 after visiting the Western Front. Henry Gullett, the first Official War Correspondent, arrived in November 1917. The long-lasting effect of this campaign was the Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, when France won the mandate for Syria and Lebanon, while the British Empire won the mandates for Mesopotamia and Palestine. The Republic of Turkey came into existence in 1923 after the Turkish War of Independence ended the Ottoman Empire. The European mandates ended with the formation of the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932, the Lebanese Republic in 1943, the State of Israel in 1948, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan and Syrian Arab Republic in 1946. Background Since 1805, Egypt had been a de facto independent state under the Muhammad Ali Dynasty, though it remained de jure part of the Ottoman Empire. The United Kingdom's occupation of Egypt from 1882 severely curtailed Egypt's de facto independence, but did not alter its legal status, with the Egyptian Khedive technically remaining a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan. Seeking to end the British occupation of the country, Khedive Abbas II sided with the Ottoman Empire upon the latter's entry into the First World War on the side of the Central Powers. This prompted the United Kingdom to depose Abbas, terminate the still persisting legal fiction of Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt, and declare the re-establishment of the Sultanate of Egypt, with Hussein Kamel, uncle of the deposed Khedive, as Sultan. The sultanate was to be administered as a British protectorate, with all matters pertinent to the war effort controlled exclusively by the United Kingdom. The Suez Canal was of vital strategic importance to the British, reducing the sailing time from India, New Zealand and Australia to Europe. As a result Egypt became a major base during the war, particularly during the Gallipoli campaign. To Germany and the Ottoman Empire the canal was the closest and weakest link in British communications. Defence of the canal posed a number of problems, with its