Enver Pasha

Leader of the Young Turks who brought the Ottoman Empire into World War I.

Life

Young Turks

Enver was an Ottoman officer and a hero of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. In 1913 he took part in a coup, after which he ruled together with Talat and Cemal as the "Three Pashas," and became Minister of War.

Three Pashas

In 1914 he pushed the empire into an alliance with Germany and into World War I. That winter he personally commanded the Battle of Sarıkamış, in which the Ottoman army was almost entirely wiped out in the bitter cold. From 1915 the government led by his Committee of Union and Progress carried out mass deportations and massacres of Armenians, with an estimated death toll of several hundred thousand to 1.5 million.

Killed in Central Asia

After defeat in 1918 he fled abroad, later joining the anti-Soviet Basmachi movement in Central Asia, and was killed in 1922 fighting the Red Army in what is now Tajikistan.

Legacy

Enver Pasha's decisions hastened the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and he and two other pashas bore responsibility for the Armenian Genocide.

Did you know? His remains were brought back from Tajikistan in 1996 and reburied in Istanbul.

Key dates

• 1908Young Turk Revolution
• 1913Takes part in a coup, forms the Three Pashas regime
• 1914Pushes entry into World War I; Battle of Sarıkamış
• 1915Armenian Genocide begins
• 1918Fled abroad
• 1922Killed in Central Asia