page_title: Enver Pasha
section_title: Pan-Turkism and death, 1921–22
hierarchical_section_title: Enver Pasha / Pan-Turkism and death, 1921–22
caption_attribution_description: English: Enver pasja
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: On 30 July 1921, with the Turkish War of Independence in full swing, Enver decided to return to Anatolia.  He went to Batum to be close to the new border. However, Mustafa Kemal did not want him among the Turkish revolutionaries.  Mustafa Kemal had stopped all friendly ties with Enver Pasha and the CUP as early as 1912, and he explicitly rejected the pan-Turkic ideas and what Mustafa Kemal perceived as Enver Pasha's utopian goals. Enver Pasha changed his plans and 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 the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to help suppress the Basmachi Revolt against the local pro-Moscow Bolshevik regime. Instead, however, he made secret contacts with some of the rebellion's leaders and, along with a small number of followers, defected to the basmachi side.  His aim was to unite the numerous basmachi groups under his own command and mount a co-ordinated offensive against the Bolsheviks in order to realise his pan-Turkic dreams. After a number of successful military operations he managed to establish himself as the rebels’ supreme commander, and turned their disorganized forces into a small but well-drilled army.  His command structure was built along German lines and his staff included a number of experienced Turkish officers.
  From Fromkin 1989, p. 487:
   However Enver’s personal weaknesses reasserted themselves. He was a vain, strutting man who loved uniforms, medals and titles.  For use in stamping official documents, he ordered a golden seal that described him as ‘Commander-in-Chief of all the Armies of Islam, Son-in-Law of the Caliph and Representative of the Prophet.’  Soon he was calling himself Emir of Turkestan, a practice not conducive to good relations with the Emir whose cause he served. At some point in the first half of 1922, the Emir of Bukhara broke off relations with him, depriving him of troops and much-needed financial support. The Emir of Afghanistan also failed to march to his aid.
  On 4 August 1922, as he allowed his troops to celebrate the Kurban Bayramı (Eid al-Adha) holiday while retaining a guard of 30 men at his headquarters near the village of Ab-i-Derya near Dushanbe, the Red Army Bashkir cavalry brigade under the command of ethnic Armenian, Yakov Melkumov (Hakob Melkumian), launched a surprise attack. According to some sources, Enver and some 25 of his men mounted their horses and charged the approaching troops, when Enver was killed by machine-gun fire.  In his memoirs, Enver Pasha's aide Yaver Suphi Bey stated that Enver Pasha died of a bullet wound right above his heart during a cavalry charge. Alternatively, according to Melkumov's memoirs, Enver managed to escape on horseback and hid for four days in the village of Chaghan.  His hideout was located after a Red Army officer infiltrated the village in disguise. Melkumov's troops then stormed Chaghan, and in the ensuing combat Enver was killed by Melkumov himself.
  From Fromkin 1989, p. 488:
   There are several accounts of how Enver died.  According to the most persuasive of them, when the Russians attacked he gripped his pocket Koran and, as always, charged straight ahead. Later his decapitated body was found on the field of battle. His Koran was taken from his lifeless fingers and was filed in the archives of the Soviet secret police.
  Enver's body was buried near Ab-i-Derya. In 1996, his remains were brought to Turkey and reburied at Abide-i Hürriyet (Monument of Liberty) cemetery in Şişli, Istanbul.  Enver's image remains controversial in Turkey, since there are those who blame him for the Ottoman entrance into World War I and the subsequent collapse of the Empire.
caption: A portrait of Enver Pasha.
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