İsmail Enver
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| İsmail Enver | |
|---|---|
| 22 November 1881 - 4 August 1922 | |
 Ismail Enver |
|
| Nickname | Enver Pasha |
| Place of birth | Istanbul |
| Place of death | Çeğen, Tajikistan |
| Allegiance | Ottoman Empire |
| Rank | General, Minister of War |
| Unit | Third Army |
| Battles/wars | Battle of Sarikamish |
| Other work | Revolutionary |
İsmail Enver (Ottoman Turkish: اسماعيل انور) (November 22, 1881 in Istanbul - August 4, 1922), known to Europeans during his political career as Enver Pasha (Turkish: Enver Paşa) or Enver Bey was a Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution. Due to his contributions for the revolution, he was given the nickname "The Hero of Liberty"(Hürriyet Kahramanı). He was the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both Balkan Wars and World War I.
Enver Bey was born to a wealthy family in Istanbul. He studied in different degrees of military schools in the empire and finally he graduated from the Harp Akademisi in 1903. He became a major in 1906. He was sent to the Third Army which was stationed in Thessaloniki. During his service in the city, he became a member of the Committee of Union and Progress. He made important contributions to the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution (this was the second attempt after Abdul-Hamid II abolished the first constitution in 1878). He went to Berlin, Germany as a military diplomat and there he was affected by the rising military power of Germans and studied on German military doctrine (which he would later use in the Ottoman Army).
Contents |
[edit] Initial Career
- See also: Countercoup (1909), 31 March Incident, Italo-Turkish War, and Balkan Wars
In a Countercoup (1909), the CUP overthrew the coalition of the Liberal Union (Ottoman Empire) and the Committee of Union and Progress, which resulted in the 31 March Incident. Rebels wanted to close the parliament and return to the old system. Enver Bey took an active role in putting the uprising down.
In 1911, the newly unified Italy attacked to the province of Trablusgarp (Libya). Enver decided to join the the defence of the province and went to Libya but, in the end Italy took control of Libya and Enver Bey had to return to Istanbul. He was made lieutenant colonel in 1912 thanks to his active role in the war.
In 1913, Enver Bey ordered the army to march to Edirne, which was invaded by Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars. The Ottoman Army regained control of the city relatively easily because of the war going on between Bulgaria and other Balkan nations at that time. After this success, Enver Bey became a Pasha.
| Armenian Genocide |
|---|
| Background |
| Armenians in the Ottoman Empire · Armenian Question · Hamidian Massacres · Zeitun Resistance (1895) · 1896 Ottoman Bank Takeover · Yıldız Attempt · Adana Massacre · Young Turk Revolution |
| The Genocide |
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Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital · Tehcir Law · Armenian casualties of deportations · Ottoman Armenian casualties · Labour battalion |
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Major extermination centers: |
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Resistance: |
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Foreign aid and relief: |
| Responsible parties |
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Young Turks: |
| Aftermath |
| Courts-Martial · Operation Nemesis · Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire · Denial of the Genocide
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[edit] The Coup
- See also: Three Pashas and Coup of 1913
After these political and military achievements, he introduced a military dictatorship that came to be called the Three Pashas (Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, and Djemal Pasha). In 1914, he became Minister of War in the cabinet of Sait Halim Pasha, and married the daughter of Prince Süleyman, thus entering the royal family. His power grew steadily while Europe marched toward total war.
[edit] World War One
- Further information: Middle Eastern theatre of World War I
Enver Paşa was an architect of the Ottoman-German Alliance, and expected a quick victory in the war that would benefit the Ottoman Empire. Without informing the other members of the Cabinet, he allowed the two German warships Goeben and Breslau to enter the Dardanelles. Pursuit of Goeben and Breslauended with continued diplomacy from France and Russia attempted to keep Ottoman Empire out of the war, but Germany was agitating for a commitment. Finally on 29 October, the point of no return was reached when Admiral Souchon took Goeben, Breslau and a squadron of Ottoman warships into the Black Sea and raided the Russian ports of Odessa, Sevastopol and Theodosia. Russia declared war on Ottoman Empire on 2 November and Britain followed suit on 5 November. Most of the Turkish cabinet members and CUP leaders were against such a rush entry to the war, but Enver Paşa thought that it was the right thing to do.
As soon as the war started, October 31, 1914, Enver ordered that all men of military age report to army recruiting offices. The offices were unable to handle the vast flood of men and long delays occurred. This had the effect of ruining the crop harvest for that year.
[edit] War Minister
Enver proved to be ineffective as War Minister and frequently over the next four years the Germans would have to support the Ottoman government with generals such as Liman von Sanders, Falkenhayn, Baron von der Goltz, and Kress von Kressenstein. The Germans also gave the Ottoman government military supplies, soldiers, and even fuel.
Enver Paşa’s message to the army and the people was “war until final victory”. During the war the living conditions were deteriorated rapidly. The empire had growing discontent. The government of Committee of Union and Progress spent much more than it took in and the inflation rate over the four years of war was greater than 1600%.
[edit] Defeat at Sarikamis, 1914
Enver Paşa commanded an army only once, that was Battle of Sarikamis. In the Caucasus Campaign, he wanted to encircle the Russians, force them out of Ottoman territory and take back Kars and Batumi. Enver thought of himself as a great military leader while the German military advisor, Liman von Sanders, thought of him as a military buffoon. Enver ordered a complex attack on the Russians, placed himself in personal control of the Third Army, and was utterly defeated at the Battle of Sarikamis in December-January 1914-1915. His strategy seemed feasible on paper, but he had ignored the external conditions such as the terrain and the weather. Enver's army (90,000 men) was defeated by the Russian force (100,000 men) and in the subsequent retreat, tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers died. This was the single worst defeat of a Ottoman army in all of World War I.
[edit] Commanding the forces of the capital 1915 – 1918
After his defeat at Sarikamis, Enver returned to Istanbul and took command of the Turkish forces around the capital. The British and French were planning on forcing the approaches to Istanbul in the hope of knocking the Ottomans out of the war. A large Allied Fleet, largely composed of older battleships unfit for duty against the German High Seas Fleet, assembled and staged an attack on the Dardanelles on March 18, 1915. The attack (the forerunner to the failed Gallipoli campaign) left the Turks - and Enver - demoralized. As a result, Enver turned over command to Liman von Sanders, who commanded the successful defence of Gallipoli.
[edit] Army of Islam
- See also: Armenian-Azerbaijani war (1918 - 1920)
During 1917, due to the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, the Russian army in the Caucasus had ceased to exist. Meanwhile, Committee of Union and Progress, managed to win the friendship of the Bolsheviks with the signing of the Ottoman-Russian friendship treaty (January 1, 1918). Enver looked for victory where Russia left in the caucuses. When Enver discussed his plans for taking over southern Russia, the Germans told him to keep out. Undeterred, Enver ordered the creation of a new military force called the Army of Islam which would have no German officers. Enver's Army of Islam avoided Georgia and marched through Azerbaijan. Third Army was also moving forward to pre-war boarders.
Third Army, moved towards the Democratic Republic of Armenia which formed the frontline in the caucuses. General Tovmas Nazarbekian was the commander on the Caucasus front and Andranik Toros Ozanian took the command of Armenia within the Ottoman Empire. Vehib Pasha, forced Armenians to retreat and he also captured Trabzon, where the Russians had left huge quantities of supplies. Then the army turned its face to Georgia.
Army of Islam, under the control of Nuri Pasha, moved forward and faced with General Lionel Charles Dunsterville at Baku. General Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of the city on September 14, after six weeks of occupation, and withdrew to Iran; most of the Armenian population escaped with British forces. Ottomans and theirs Azeri allies, after the Battle of Baku, entered the city on September 15.
However, after the Armistice of Mudros between Great Britain and Ottoman Empire on October 30, Ottoman troops were substituted by the Triple Entente. These conquests in the Caucasus counted for very little in the war as a whole.
[edit] Armistice and exile
Enver resigned days before the empire capitulated by signing an Armistice of Mudros on October 30. Enver resigned with the rest of CUP Cabinet two days later, and the "Three Pashas" all fled into exile. On January 1 1919, the new government expelled Enver Pasha from the army. He was tried in absentia, in the Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20, for crimes of “plunging the country into war without a legitimate reason, forced deportation of Armenians and leaving the country without permission” and condemned to death.
[edit] Pan-Turkism, 1919 - 1920
- See also: Basmachi Revolt
Enver first went to Germany in October 1918 where he communicated and worked with German Communist figures like Karl Radek. On August 1920, was successful. He was received well in Moscow where he had established contacts with representatives from Central Asia and other Committee of Union and Progress members. He also met with Bolshevik leaders including Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He tried to support the Turkish national movement and corresponded with Mustafa Kemal, giving him the guarantee that he did not intend to intervene in the movement in Anatolia. Enver Paşa went to Baku between 1-8 September 1920 to take part in the failed (not produce the desired outcome) "Congress of Eastern Peoples", representing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. He later returned to Berlin where he tried to establish a secret organization that would transfer Russian military assistance to Turkey, an attempt that eventually failed.
On 30 July 1921, with the Turkish War of Independence reaching its goals, Enver decided to return to Anatolia. He went to Batumi to be close to the new border. However, Mustafa Kemal did not want him among the Turkish revolutionaries. Mustafa Kemal had broken with Enver Pasha and the Committee of Union and Progress as early as 1914 (beginning of the WWI), he had explicitly rejected the pan-Turkic ideas and what Mustafa Kemal perceived as Enver Pasha's utopian goals (see: Kemalism). Enver Pasha changed his plans and traveled to Central Asia to realize his pan-Turkish dreams. Enver then fled to Russian Turkestan where he hoped to unite the Turkic groups of that region and oppose the spread of Bolshevism. There, he took part in the Basmachi Revolt and he was killed in a failed last-ditch cavalry charge on August 4, 1922, near Baldzhuan in Turkestan (present-day Tajikistan).
[edit] Aftermath
- See also: Operation Nemesis
A postwar tribunal in Istanbul tried Enver in absentia for crimes related to the Armenian Genocide and condemned him to death.[1]
On 4 August 1922, as he was celebrating the Ramadan at his headquarters near the village of Ab-ı Derya, Russians attacked. He was killed in that attack. Enver Paşa was buried in the village of Ab-ı Derya in current-day Tajikistan. In 1996, his remains were brought to Republic of Turkey and reburied in Istanbul.
[edit] References
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Fromkin, David (1989). A Peace to End All Peace, Avon Books.
