Enver Pasha

1881--1922, Turkish soldier and leader of the Young Turks: minister of war (1914--18)

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Enver Pasha

Born Nov. 22, 1881, in Istanbul; died Aug. 4, 1922, near Bal’dzhuan. Turkish military and political figure. Participant in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and a leader of the Young Turks’ party, the Committee of Union and Progress.

Enver graduated from the Academy of the General Staff in Istanbul in 1903. In January 1913 he carried out a coup d’etat that brought down the government of the Liberal Union, a feudalcompradorist party, and formed an unofficial triumvirate with Talaat Pasha and Jemal Pasha that became the governing power in Turkey. Enver, one of the principal figures dedicated to the ideology of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islam, initiated a military alliance with Germany and led Turkey into World War I. During the war he held the supreme military post of deputy commander in chief; the sultan was formally the commander in chief.

Enver and Talaat were the two men most responsible for the mass slaughter of the Armenian people. In September 1918, on Enver’s orders, Turkish forces intervened in the Caucasus in violation of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) and captured Baku. After Turkey signed the Moudhros Armistice of 1918, Enver fled to Germany and later to Soviet Russia. After failing to reach Anatolia and head the struggle there against Ataturk, he took part in late 1921 in an anti-Soviet Basmachi revolt in Middle Asia. Enver was killed in a battle with Red Army units.

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References in periodicals archive

Mustafa Kemal, much like the Unionist triumvirate of Enver Pasha, Talat Pasha, and Cemal Pasha, believed in a form of government whereby the country would consist of "Turks." Unlike his predecessors, however, the Republic's mastermind had access to necessary means to make his destructive dream come true.

Ergenekon: an illegitimate form of government

However," the text continues, "our Egyptian brethren have helped us to a certain degree financially and morally in the last two wars, and in spite of their unbelieving rulers, forwarded their collections on our behalf to the Capital of the Caliphate." This indicates an Ottoman author in Enver Pasha's circle such as Shawish.

The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims

Enver Pasha (b.1881-d.1922)--Pasha (see Pasha below) who died fighting in the Caucasus, he was part of the Committee of Union and Progress Party during the year of constitutional monarchy in Turkey (1876) and was also a leader of the Young Turk movement.

Glossary

Despite such telling points, her interpretations are often reductive: however conservative, Werfel was not a volkisch thinker (a term she uses too loosely), and his Enver Pasha by no means 'embodies stereotypical Oriental despotism' but is terrifying precisely because of his ultra-modern amorality.

Jewish-German Identity in the Orientalist Litarature of Else Lasker-Schuler, Friedrich Wolf, and Franz Werfel

Enver Pasha is possibly the most enigmatic and romantic figure the Muslim world has produced in the 20th century.

The Green Crescent Under the Red Star: Enver Pasha in Soviet Russia, 1919-1922

Most historians have fingered Enver Pasha, Minister of War of the Committee of Union and Progress hereafter CUP), for the decision.

The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War

In March 1915 as difficulties mounted, Arthur Zimmermann, the Foreign Ministry's undersecretary of state, expressed his concern about the "attitude of the Great Sharif of Mecca." He urged the German embassy in Constantinople to take measures, in association with the Turkish war minister Enver Pasha, "for the energetic combatting of English influence in Arabia." As a part of Berlin's growing awareness of the problem, the Foreign Ministry decided not only to reorganize and intensify German propaganda in the Ottoman Empire, but also to establish a method by which such propaganda could be spread more effectively throughout the Islamic world.(12)

German policy toward the Sharif of Mecca, 1914-1916

Part IV, The Twentieth Century, is composed of "In Pursuit of Elusive Glory: Enver Pasha's Role in the Pan-Islamic and Basmachi Movements," by Suhnaz Yilmaz, "Marshal Fevzi Cakmak's Family and Education," by Nilufer Hatemi, "Our Women Treasures: Early Republican Turkish Women and Their Public Identity," by Ipek K.

Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World, A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz

Some of them are already well known such as those regarding Ataturk and Enver Pasha. Others regarding the notorious supposed World War II Nazi spy "Cicero" show how this agent might really have been a double agent working for Turkey.

The Kemalists: Islamic Revival and the Fate of Secular Turkey