ENVER PASA (1874-1947)

Ottoman general and commander in chief, a hero of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, and one of the trimvitate that virtually ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. He played a key role in the Ottoman entry into World War I on the side of Germany and after the Ottoman defeat in 1918 he attempted to organize the Turkic peoples of Central Asia against the Soviets.

The son of Ahmed Bey, a member of Sultan Abdülhamid II´s retinue who later acquired the rank of pasa, Enver was graduated from the military academy in Istanbul as a captain and was posted to the 3rd Army in Thessaloniki at the time a chief centre of revolutionary activity against the regime of Abdülhamid.

In 1903 he led Ottoman military operations against Macedonian guerrillas. In 1906 he was assigned to the 3rd Army headquarters at Monastir where he joined the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress), the conspiratorial core of the Young Turk Revolution, he joined Gen. Mahmud Sevket under whose command an Army of Deliverance advanced to Istanbul to suppress a religious uprising (April 13, 1909) and to depose Abdülhamid II. In the same year he was appointed military attaché in Berlin where he deepened his knowledge of the German language and military tactics. In 1911 when warfare broke out between Italy and the Ottoman Empire he left Berlin to organize the Ottoman resistance in Lybia and in 1912 he was appointed the governor of Bengazi (in modern Lybia).

Back in Istanbul he participated in the politics of the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, leading the coup d´etat of Jan 23, 1913 which overthrew the opposition government of the Liberal Union and restored his party to power. In the Second Balkan War (1913), Enver was chief of the general staff on the Ottoman Army. On JUly 22, 1913 he recaptured Edirne (Adrianople) from the Bulgars. Thenceforth, until 1918, the empire was dominated by the triumvate of Enver, Talât and Cemal.

In 1914 Enver, as minister of war was instrumental in the signing of a defensive alliance with Germany against Russia. When the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the CEntral POwers (NOvember 1914), Enver, as the virtual chief of the army cooperated closely with German officers serving in the Ottoman Army. His military plans included Pan-Turkic (or Pan-Turanian) schemes which were aimed at uniting the Turkic peoples of Russian Central Asia with the Ottoman Turks.

These plans resulted in the disastrous defeat in December 1914 at Sarikamis (between Erzurum and Kars in eastern Turkey) where he lost most of the 3rd Army. He recovered his prestige when the Allied forces were defeated at Gallipoli (1916). In 1918 following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russia´s withdrawal from the war he occupied Baku (now in Azerbaijan). After the Armistice in Europe, Enver fled to Germany (November 1918).

In Berlin he met the Bolshevik leader Karl Radek and in 1920 he went to Moscow. The Soviet leaders encouraged him to form a Union of Islamic Revolutionary Societies and its Turkish Affiliate, People´s Councils Party. Confident of Soviet support he returned to Berlin to prepare to take over the supreme command in the Anatolian resistance against Allied occupation replacing Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk). These plans were rejected by the Soviets but Enver´s supporters continued their activities in Anatolia. In September 1921 the overwhelming victory against the Greeks at Sakarya consolidated Mustafa Kemal´s position in Anatolia and put an end to Enver´s plans.

Enver then turned to Central Asia where under the pretext of organizing Central Asian Muslims in a struggle against the British he undertook to unite the Turkic Uzbek factions into a resistance against the Soviets. In November 1921 he joined the anti-Soviet Basmachi revolt in the Bukhara region and in March he sent the Soviet government an ultimatum signed Commander in Chief of the National Armies of Turkistan, Khiva and Bukhara in which he demanded Russian evacuation of those areas. In the following year he was killed in action against the Soviets.