page_title: Enver Pasha
section_title: Army of Islam
hierarchical_section_title: Enver Pasha / World War I / Army of Islam
caption_attribution_description: English: Wilhlem II and Enver Pasha in 1917, image was published on Axis forum
context_page_description: Ismail Enver Pasha was an Ottoman military officer and a leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. He became the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both the Balkan Wars and in World War I. In the course of his career he was known by increasingly elevated titles as he rose through military ranks, including Enver Efendi, Enver Bey, and finally Enver Pasha, "pasha" being the honorary title Ottoman military officers gained on promotion to the rank of Mirliva.
  After the Ottoman coup d’état of January 1913, Enver Pasha became the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire, forming one-third of the triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas" who held de facto rule over the Empire from 1913 until the end of World War I in 1918. As war minister and de facto Commander-in-Chief, Enver Pasha was one of the most powerful figures of the government of the Ottoman Empire. Along with Talaat and Djemal, he was one of the principal perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide, of the Assyrian Genocide and of the Greek Genocide and thus is held responsible for the death of between 800,000 and 1,800,000 Armenians, 300,000 Assyrians and 350,000 Greeks.
context_section_description: During 1917, due to the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, the Russian army in the Caucasus fell apart and dissolved. At the same time, the Committee of Union and Progress managed to win the friendship of the Bolsheviks with the signing of the Ottoman-Russian friendship treaty (1 January 1918). Enver looked for victory when Russia withdrew from the Caucasus region. When Enver discussed his plans for taking over southern Russia, he 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. The Third Army under Vehib Pasha was also moving forward to pre-war borders and towards the First Republic of Armenia, which formed the frontline in the Caucasus. General Tovmas Nazarbekian was the commander on the Caucasus front, and Andranik Ozanian took the command of Armenia within the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman advance was halted at the Battle of Sardarabad.
  The Army of Islam, under the control of Nuri Pasha, moved forward and attacked Australian, New Zealand, British, and Canadian troops led by General Lionel Charles Dunsterville at Baku. General Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of the city on 14 September, after six weeks of occupation, and withdrew to Iran; most of the Armenian population escaped with British forces. The Ottomans and their Azerbaijani allies, after the Battle of Baku, entered the city on 15 September.
  However, after the Armistice of Mudros between Great Britain and the Ottoman Empire on 30 October, Ottoman troops were obliged to withdraw and replaced by the Triple Entente. These conquests in the Caucasus counted for very little in the war as a whole but they did however ensure that Baku remained within the boundaries of Azerbaijan while a part of Soviets and later as an independent nation.
caption: Wilhelm II and Enver Pasha in 1917
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