Anyone who is aware of the history of the Armenian Genocide has heard the name of Enver Pasha as one of its key executors.
Unlike
its mastermind, Talaat, Ismail Enver Pasha was a military officer, born
in Constantinople on November 22, 1881. He studied in different
military schools and graduated in 1903 with distinction. In 1906 he was
sent to the Third Army, stationed in Salonica. He became a member of the
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) during his service.
When
the Young Turk coup broke out in June 1908, Enver became one of its
military leaders. He was actively involved in the suppression of the
attempt of countercoup of April 1909, which tried to restore Abdul
Hamid’s absolute powers. Afterwards, he was sent to Berlin as a military
attaché, where he strengthened the ties between German and Ottoman
military.
During
the Italo-Turkish war of 1911, Enver left Berlin and organized the
defense of Libya, where he was appointed governor of Benghazi. He was
called back to Constantinople when the First Balkan War started in
October 1912 and ascended to the grade of lieutenant colonel. In the
same year, the CUP fell from government and was replaced by the Liberal
Union party. However, the severe Ottoman defeat in the First Balkan War
weakened the government and Enver organized a coup in January 1913. The
power returned to the CUP and the triumvirate formed by Enver, Talaat,
and Jemal Pasha took charge until the end of World War I. Enver became
Minister of War and married into the royal family. When in June 1913 the
Second Balkan War broke out, he reversed some of the losses by
recapturing Adrianople (nowadays Edirne) from the Bulgarians.
Enver
was an architect of the Ottoman-German alliance in World War I,
expecting a quick victory that would benefit the empire. He assumed
command of the Ottoman forces in the Caucasus. Pursuing his quest for a
Pan-Turkic empire stretching to Central Asia, he wanted to force the
Russians out and take back Kars and Batum, which had been ceded after
the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878. His offensive in the thick of winter
ended with a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Sarikamish in
December 1914 – January 1915 and tens of thousands of Turkish soldiers
dying in the subsequent retreat. On his return to Constantinople, Enver
blamed his failure on his Armenian soldiers, although in January 1915 an
Armenian soldier had carried him through battle lines on his back and
saved his life, and a letter written by Enver himself to the Prelate of
Konia, Bishop Karekin Khachadourian, praised the Armenians for their
bravery and faithfulness in February 1915.
Enver
played a major role in the Armenian Genocide. He took the first steps
by ordering the Armenian recruits in the Ottoman army to be disarmed and
reassigned to labor battalions before their summary executions. These
instructions were explained on the basis of accusations of treasonous
activity, but the defeat of his army only provided the pretext for
escalating a campaign of extermination that was also unleashed against
the civilian population with the use of the secret paramilitary Special
Organization (
Teshkilât-i-Mahsusa
) to systematically massacre deported Armenians.
After
the collapse of the Russian front in 1918, the Ottoman armies advanced
into the Caucasus. The Third Army, commanded by Vehib Pasha, entered the
territory of Eastern Armenia, and was halted at the battles of
Sardarabad, Bash Aparan, and Gharakilise in May 1918. A new military
force called the Army of Islam, commanded by Enver’s half-brother Nuri,
advanced towards the territory of today’s Azerbaijan and, in combination
with the Tatars (Azerbaijanis), occupied Baku on September 15,
organizing a massacre of the local Armenian population.
However,
the Ottoman Empire was faced with defeat. Enver was dismissed from his
ministerial position in October 1918, and a month later he fled into
exile together with other CUP members. Tried
in absentia
by a postwar courts-martial for crimes of “plunging the country into
war without a legitimate reason, forced deportation of Armenians, and
leaving the country without permission,” he was condemned to death in
July 1919.
Enver
first went to Germany, and shuttled back and forth between Berlin and
Moscow trying to build a German-Soviet alliance. He went to Baku in
September 1920 and took part in the Congress of Eastern Peoples. In July
1921 he tried to return to Turkey, but Mustafa Kemal did not want him
among his forces, as he explicitly rejected Enver’s Pan-Turkic ideas. He
traveled to Moscow where he managed to win the trust of the Soviet
authorities. In November 1921 he was sent by Lenin to Bukhara, in
Turkestan, to help suppress a revolt against the local Bolshevik regime.
Instead, along with a small number of followers, he defected to the
rebels and united their different groups under his own command to fight
against the Red Army.
On
August 4, 1922, a cavalry brigade of the Red Army under the command of
Hakob Melkumian (known in Russian sources as Yakov Melkumov) launched a
surprise attack over Enver’s headquarters near the village of
Ab-i-Derya. The attack ended with Enver’s death. There are different
versions. According to Melkumov’s memoirs, Enver managed to escape on
horseback and hid for several days in the village of Chaghan. After the
hideout was located, the Soviet troops stormed the village and Enver was
killed by Melkumov himself in the ensuing combat.
Enver’s
body was buried near Ab-i-Derya. As it happened with Talaat in 1943,
the remains of this executioner of the Armenian people were brought to
Turkey in 1996 and reburied at the Monument of Liberty cemetery in
Shishli, Istanbul.
