Enver Pasha

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Enver Pascha as Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire

Damad İsmail Enver ( Ottoman اسماعیل انور) or Enver Pascha (born November 22, 1881 in Istanbul , † August 4, 1922 near Baldschuan , People's Republic of Bukhara , today Tajikistan ) was a politician, lieutenant general and minister of war of the Ottoman Empire and one of the leading Young Turks . Enver Pascha was one of the main people responsible for the genocide against the Armenians and a contemporary of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk , with whom he rivaled for a while.

Origin and advancement

Ismail Enver was born to a Turkish railroad worker and grew up in simple circumstances. His father paid attention to a good school education. During his school and student days he came into contact with bourgeois revolutionary ideas and in 1897, as a member of the Young Turkish movement, took part in the failed student protests against the government under Sultan Abdülhamid II . At the turn of the century, the intellectual young Turks increasingly gained influence over the Turkish officer corps. Enver, who had embarked on the career of an officer, would later rise next to Cemal and Talaat in the leadership of the Committee for Unity and Progress ( İttihad ve Terakki Fırkası ). The basic prerequisite for this was his important role in the Young Turkish Revolution of 1908. In the military revolt that began in his garrison in Thessaloniki , the young captain Enver Bey took over the military leadership. On July 24, 1908, Abdülhamid II had to re- enact the liberal constitution of the Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha from 1876, lift censorship , issue an amnesty and dismiss reactionary members of the government. On April 13, 1909, reactionary forces attempted a coup against the takeover of power by the Young Turks, which revolutionary troops crushed after three days. Then the Young Turks dethroned Sultan Abdülhamid II and replaced him with his powerless brother Mehmed V , who swore loyalty to the constitution.

Enver Bey as a graduate of the military academy

The young, ambitious Ismail Enver was still in the second row of the Young Turkish Movement. He campaigned against pro-British and pro-French forces for a military alliance with the German Empire and consequently served as military attaché at the Ottoman embassy in Berlin from 1909 to 1911 . There he played a key role in developing the close German-Turkish alliance relations before the First World War and personally ensured that German officers assumed the highest positions in the Turkish army . With the help of Prussian-German military advisors and modern German weapons, he wanted to reform the backward Ottoman military system in order to be able to counter the threat of attacks by Italy in Cyrenaica and the Dodecanese and British expansionism to Palestine , Syria , Arabia and Mesopotamia . This military policy poisoned the relations with the world power Great Britain, which had long been strained by the concession to the Deutsche Bank to build the Baghdad Railway .

On the occasion of the Italo-Turkish war , Ismail Enver left Berlin in 1911, but as Turkish commander in chief was unable to prevent the loss of Libya . With the defeats in North Africa and the Dodecanese, the political persecution of oppositional forces in the country and acts of violence against citizens who were not of Turkish nationality, the Young Turks gambled away their political power for a short time. In July 1912 they were overthrown by the pro-British "liberal" party Freedom and Unity . However, the new government got into a crisis as a result of the First Balkan War , which began in October 1912 , which led to catastrophic defeats and large territorial losses, and the political division of the officer corps. As early as January 1913, Envers led a successful military coup by the Young Turks, which, however, did not prevent further military defeats in the Balkans. The new Young Turkish government under the leadership of Grand Vizier Mahmud Şevket Pascha was forced to conclude a loss-making peace in London in the spring of 1913. The Ottoman Empire lost all of Europe including Adrianople . A little later, however, the victorious Balkan states fell out among themselves over the division of the booty. Isolated Bulgaria fought alone against a new alliance of Serbia , Greece and Romania in the Second Balkan War and was subject to this superiority. Enver recognized the unique opportunity to regain a small part of the lost territory, attacked Bulgaria as the Turkish commander in chief and was able to recapture Adrianople. This made him a war hero in the public opinion of the Ottomans, which secured him the post of Minister of War in the new Young Turkish government.

Time as minister of war

Enver Pascha (2nd from right) during a front visit by German Emperor Wilhelm II (2nd from left) with the commander of the Ottoman defense troops at the Dardanelles (4th from left) and the Ottoman Vice Admiral Merten (3rd from left)

Between the summer of 1913 and the end of 1914, Enver Pascha was at the height of his reputation and power. He ruled in an informal triumvirate with Interior Minister Talât Pascha and Navy Minister Cemal Pascha with almost dictatorial powers. Shortly after taking power at the beginning of 1913, İsmail Enver was given the honorary title “ Pascha ” together with his appointment as major general , under which he is still known today as “Enver Pascha”. His social advancement was facilitated by his marriage to an Ottoman princess.

On January 3, 1914, he was appointed Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire by Sultan Mehmed V. As Minister of War, Enver first "cleaned up" the officers' corps by forcing generals and officers suspected of opposition to the Young Turks to take massive retirement. In addition, in August 1914, Enver achieved the merger with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War , which in autumn 1914 led to the official entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war. Until shortly before the end of the war, he headed the Turkish military operations as "Vice Generalissimo" - actually as Commander-in-Chief, although nominally the Sultan as "Generalissimo" was superior. When the major Ottoman offensive on the Caucasus front in the winter of 1914/15, which Enver personally led, ended in a downright debacle, the Young Turkish regime found itself in a precarious position at the beginning of the war. The Ottoman army was not adequately equipped for a winter campaign and suffered great human losses in the battle of Sarıkamış . The Russian army thereupon opened the counter-offensive in the east in the spring of 1915, counting on sympathy among the Armenian population. At the same time, the British attempted to land on the Gallipoli peninsula, not far from Istanbul, and stayed there for months. Enver's military reputation in the army has been badly damaged since then, but was partially restored through later military successes, in particular through the defense of Gallipolis.

The Young Turkish Triumvirate - with the impending collapse of the empire in mind - then intensified the state terror against the Armenians through massive deportations , which were caused by insufficient supplies, epidemics and targeted massacres in a long-planned and by the allies of the Ottoman Empire (the German Empire and Austria-Hungary) resulted in at least tolerated, if not indirectly supported, genocide . Enver was one of the main people responsible for this. Greeks and Arameans / Assyrians were also persecuted . This approach shattered the internal cohesion, but also the economic strength of the multi-ethnic state. In Central Asia in 1916 Enver Pascha stirred up pan- Turkish dreams in connection with the uprising of the Basmachi against the tsarist rule , which led to a crisis of confidence in the German army command.

Since a government reshuffle in February 1917, Enver also served as deputy to the new Grand Vizier Talât Pascha. Despite the Turkish-German success in the defense of Gallipolis in 1916 and the massive German military engagement in the Middle East, the situation on the Caucasus front only improved when the Russian army disbanded as a result of the October Revolution in 1917. On the basis of the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 3, 1918, the Young Turks were able to celebrate the return of the districts of Kars , Ardahan and Batumi , which had been ceded to Russia in 1878 . In June 1918, Enver Pasha had an “ Islamic Army ” set up in the Caucasus to conquer Azerbaijan with the important oil metropolis Baku - which again caused friction with the allied Germany and led to massacres of Armenians in Baku. Shortly after the invasion of Baku on the Caspian Sea , which tied up important Ottoman troops, the front in Palestine collapsed due to a successful British offensive. The First World War was finally lost for the Ottoman Empire when the allied Bulgaria surrendered at the end of September 1918 and the Ottomans were thus cut off from the German supply.

Because of serious mistakes in the military leadership, his involvement in the genocide against the Armenians , for which he was jointly responsible with Interior Minister and Grand Vizier Talât Pascha, and his adventurous pan- Turkish great power plans, Enver Pasha had made enemies of the part of the officer corps and the Young Turks that secularized one , wanted a republican state and, in view of the foreseeable defeat, looked for ways to achieve a compromise with the Western European victorious powers. The disempowerment of Enver began with the accession of Sultan Mehmed VI. in July 1918, who supported the opposition forces and deposed Enver as Vice Generalissimo. When the war defeat after the Bulgarian catastrophe was obvious and inevitable, the government under Grand Vizier Talaat could no longer hold out and had to resign on October 14, 1918. Enver was dismissed as Minister of War on October 4, 1918 because of his failed war strategy.

After the Mudros armistice, which was devastating for the Ottoman Empire, was signed on October 30, 1918 and a change of government that brought the liberals persecuted by the Young Turks back to power in early November 1918, Enver, Talaat and Cemal had to flee Istanbul in order to be arrested and Evade conviction. On the night of November 3rd to 4th, 1918, Enver Pascha went on board a German submarine with other leading Young Turks, which brought him to Odessa on a secret mission. The refugees, who initially all went into hiding in Germany before parting their ways, were sentenced to death in absentia in 1919 in Istanbul because of their responsibility for the Armenian genocide.

In literary form, Envers complicity in the Armenian genocide was described in the novel Die Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel , who - with reference to an authentic incident - describes the encounter between the Minister of War and the German clergyman and Orient expert Johannes Lepsius , and Enver was there describes as a coldly smiling mass murderer.

Exile in Germany and Russia

Enver and Talaat found shelter in Potsdam for a while . There he lived incognito in Neubabelsberg with his friend, the art historian Friedrich Sarre , director of the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin . In the summer of 1919 Enver and Talaat visited the revolutionary Karl Radek , who was imprisoned in Moabit , who made them the proposal to contact the Soviet leadership in order to continue the war in Central Asia against Great Britain. To do this, he was supposed to unite the remains of his “Islamic Army” with units of the Red Army . Enver succumbed to the misjudgment that the Soviet power would also tolerate his pan-Turkish program in the struggle against British imperialism, which had envisaged the oil fields around Baku. Taking advantage of his connections to German military personnel such as Hans von Seeckt , he made several attempts at the end of 1919 and beginning of 1920 to get to Soviet Russia by plane over Eastern Europe, which was sunk in post-war conflicts, but was only successful in the summer of 1920. In September 1920, at the invitation of his Soviet hosts, he took part in the first Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku , which was organized by the Comintern .

After the Congress, Enver returned to Germany, where he bought weapons to intervene in the Turkish War of Liberation . During this time, the Soviets built Enver as an alternative to Mustafa Kemal in order to keep him on a Soviet-friendly course. After a few months in Moscow, he traveled to the Caucasus in the summer of 1921 with the permission of the Soviet government. However, he broke his promise not to take action against Mustafa Kemal. After his attempt to enter Turkey from Batumi with some supporters was prevented by the Soviet authorities, he accepted a mission from the Soviet government to Turkestan . He was supposed to help bring the emirate of Bukhara , which had become independent in the turmoil of the revolution, under Soviet control.

Arrived in Bukhara in November 1921, he turned against his previous supporters and contacted leaders of the Basmachi . Among them he sought supporters for his pan-Turkish idea and agitated for the formation of a new caliphate .

Fight for a new caliphate and downfall

Because of the war-related and revolutionary turmoil, Enver Pasha seemed the right time to unite the Islamic, Turkic peoples of Central Asia in a separate state. He was not only targeting the Azerbaijanis , Turkmen and Uzbeks who had just escaped from tsarist rule , but also counted on the support of the Uyghurs in northwest China and nationalists of Turkic origin in Afghanistan and Persia . As the commander of the Basmachi and commander in chief of the troops of the emir Said Alim Khan , he fought for the goal of establishing a caliphate based in Samarkand . That of the clergy, the bourgeoisie and the rich upper class of Bukhara , Ferghanas and former Khanate of Khiva supported the struggle for independence was supported by the Red Army ended bloody. On August 4, 1922, Enver Pasha and most of his fighters fell in a bitter battle with superior Soviet troops at Cegan Tepe near Baldschuan , near the Tajik capital Dushanbe in the Pamirs .

Enver Pasha's remains were transferred to Istanbul in 1996 and buried there on the 74th anniversary of his death at the Abide-i Hürriyet , the monument to the 1908 Young Turkish Revolution .

family

In March 1914, Enver married Emine Naciye Sultan , a daughter of the brother of the Sultan Mehmed V. Reşad . Thus Enver became Damad-ı Şehriyârî (German: son-in-law of the Sultan) . From this marriage in 1917 the daughter Türkân Mayatepek, the daughter Mahpeyker Ürgüp and in 1920 the son Ali Enver Akoğlu emerged.

Others

Enver Pasha was very popular as a symbol of the new Young Turkish-Ottoman self-confidence and due to his military successes in the Ottoman Empire and other parts of the Muslim world, many families named their sons after him, for example in the case of Anwar as-Sadat . In Germany, too, Enver Pascha enjoyed a high reputation and extraordinary popularity as the initiator and guarantor of the military alliance with the Ottoman Empire. At times he was honorary chairman of the German-Turkish Association .

This reputation was not significantly diminished by the fact that military connoisseurs of Ottoman conditions such as General Otto Liman von Sanders ("Liman Pascha") rated Enver extremely critically in their war memories. During the First World War, around 800 Prussian officers and several thousand German soldiers served in the Turkish army in the Asian Corps under Envers' command . As a military attaché he had lived in Klein Glienicke for a long time before the war , so that in 1915 a bridge leading from Babelsberg to Klein Glienicke was named in his honor. The " Enver Pascha Bridge " was destroyed in the Second World War in 1945 and is to be rebuilt. A German cigarette brand named after him (Enver Bey) also ensured the great popularity of Enver Pasha.

According to the German-Jewish historian Paul Arnsberg , Enver Pascha is said to have derived his descent from the Dönme , a Sabbatian movement within Islam that went back to the Jewish prophet Shabbtai Zvi .

Awards (selection)

Fonts

  • Enver Pascha: Around Tripoli. Verlag Bruckmann, Munich 1918 (War diary from the Italo-Turkish War).

literature

  • Petra Kappert , Ruth Haerkötter, Ingeborg Böer: Turks in Berlin 1871–1945. de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-11-017465-0 (article about the life of Enver Paschas in Berlin).
  • Hans-Jürgen Kornrumpf: Enver Pascha . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Vol. 1. Munich 1974, pp. 462-464
  • Cemal Kutay : Birinci Dünya Harbinde Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa ve Hayber'de Türk cengi. ( The special organization in World War I and the Turkish operation in Khaibar . ), Istanbul 1962 (testimony of Eşref Kuşçubaşı, one of the leaders of the special organization).
  • Kurt Okay: Enver Pascha, Germany's great friend. Verlag für Kulturpolitik, Berlin 1935.

Web links

Commons : Enver Pasha  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ben Kierman: Earth and Blood. Genocide and Annihilation from Antiquity to the Present , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-421-05876-8 , pp. 515-540.
  2. ↑ The Germans and Genocide . Federal Agency for Political Education . April 26, 2016. Retrieved June 29, 2016.
  3. ^ David Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace. 2nd ed., New York 2009, p. 480.
  4. ^ Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace , p. 481 f.
  5. ^ Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace , pp. 483-485.
  6. ^ Paul Arnsberg: From Podolia to Offenbach. The Jewish Salvation Army of Jakob Frank. On the history of the Frankist movement. Offenbach am Main City Archives, 1965, p. 13.
  7. ↑ http://zbw.eu/beta/p20/person/4755/0012/about.en.html
  8. ^ Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand , Christian Zweng: The knights of the order Pour le Mérite of the First World War, Volume 1: AG. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1999, ISBN 3-7648-2505-7 , pp. 366-367.
  9. ↑ http://zbw.eu/beta/p20/person/4755/0022/about.en.html
personal data
SURNAME Enver Pasha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Enver, Ismail
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ottoman politician, general and minister of war of the Ottoman Empire, young Turkish nationalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Istanbul , Ottoman Empire
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1922
Place of death near Baldschuan, People's Republic of Bukhara