The Desperate Ottoman: Enver Paşa and The German Empire: Haley1994

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The desperate Ottoman:

Enver Paşa and the
German empire: II
Charles D. Haley
Published online: 06 Dec 2006.
To cite this article: Charles D. Haley (1994) The desperate Ottoman: Enver
Paşa and the German empire: II, Middle Eastern Studies, 30:2, 224-251, DOI:
10.1080/00263209408700994
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The Desperate Ottoman:
Enver Paşa and the German Empire: II
CHARLES D. HALEY
Enver Pa§a flourished on the notion that he held the total power of the
Ottoman Empire in his hands. Even Shevket Sureyya Aydemir, the pre-
eminent authority on Enver's life, refers to him at times as the tek soz
sahibi of the Ottoman Empire: the man with the final word. Ulrich
Trumpener points out how incorrect Aydemir's idea is. Not only was
Enver not an absolute ruler, he was not even part of a trio of absolute
rulers. He characterizes Ottoman wartime policy thus:
From November 1914 to October 1918 the direction of Ottoman

policy lay in the hands of a sizable group of CUP functionaries
among whom Enver and Talat were at most first among equals.'
Turkey's War Minister, though, was widely thought to possess a veto

on all political action in the Empire. This was the great hope of the
Germans about the occupant of the Ottoman War Ministry, but they soon
learned to their dismay that Enver was not going to give them the influence
they had desired. The presence of von der Goltz, the supposed idol of the
Ottoman officers, had no effect on Enver, who dismissed him with one
sentence: 'too old, quite especially too soft, and a poor judge of men'.2
Even the prized Berlin-Baghdad railway came under Enver's influence
almost immediately through his involvement in the Kubel affair.
The Germans found Enver eager to limit German influence at every
turn. To their consternation, the one area where he made himself absolute
master was in the military. Soon after the first treaty was signed in 1914,
Enver asked that von Lossow,3 a Bavarian officer in the service of the
Ottomans, help him redraw the contract, and a new document was
4
developed giving the Ottomans primacy in all war affairs. Certainly this
was true of troop command. None of the German officers, from Enver's
first staff chief Bronsart von Schellendorf to his last, General Hans von
Seeckt, had authority over Ottoman troops 'other than that explicitly
5
delegated to them by Enver'.
As for the mission chief, Liman von Sanders, Enver curtly informed
him that none of the Germans were under his (Liman's) command, that
he had no authority to give important orders, and that any supplies - and
especially money - from Germany would be distributed by the War
Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.30, No.2, April 1994, pp.224-251
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
ENVER PA§A AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 225
Minister and no one else.6 Still, Liman kept voicing an opinion. Even
after he was sent to Palestine during the war he kept saying that the Turks
were wasting their time in the Caucasus. All of the Germans rejected
Liman's advice, and even after the terrible §arikamis campaign that
Liman had opposed, Seeckt was still mocking Liman's military judge-
ment.7 No German officer posted in Turkey was willing to support Liman
over Enver.
After the first year of Enver's reign as War Minister the German
Marshall Hindenburg, who considered Enver a 'weak soldier',8 was furious
at Bronsart von Schellendorff for allowing Enver to run wild; he wanted
Bronsart out and Liman in as Enver's Staff Chief after the disaster in the
Caucasus.9 As a compromise, and because Enver despised Liman, General

Seeckt was brought in. The truth Hindenburg did not want to accept was
that no German officer had the power to slow down the War Minister. For
the better part of two years, Enver was allowed to indulge himself as he
wished in military ventures. Partly this resulted from the great devotion of
the Germans to him, partly from the desire of the mission's members to
counteract Liman, whose voice was as sensible as Enver's was rash.
Yet above such petty justifications was the genuine belief among the
Germans that Enver ruled the Ottomans, although there was evidence to
the contrary. The German Empire had based its oriental policy on the
false premise that the Ottoman Empire was a state run by its military. The
problem was not cleared up until 1916. Athough German military person-
nel encouraged Enver, the fault for this long-drawn-out flaw in policy
rests with the Auswartiges Amt and particularly with Ambassador
Wangenheim, who tried to work according to this theory rather than
abandon it when Enver arrived.
Enver was not ignorant of his power over German policy, a dominance
that the Auswartiges Amt allowed to continue far longer than necessary.
In 1914 Herr Mutius, an official at the embassy in Istanbul, sent Berlin a
cable that revealed a glimpse of understanding about Enver's motives
regarding German policy in the Ottoman Empire. Mutius worried about
how relations between Enver and the military mission would evolve with-
out the departed Herr Strempel. Yet almost immediately he corrected
himself, observing 'I could well imagine that Enver is not uncomfortable
to be free of a man so used to Turkish relationships.""The War Minister,
Mutius correctly guessed, wanted his oriental mystique in the eyes of the
Germans kept intact.
The glimmer in Mutius' message quickly faded, and he returned to the
usual policy of the Auswartiges Amt regarding Turkey. His critiques
concerning Liman were not as visceral as Wangenheim's. Nevertheless,
he urged that Liman be reminded that political relations were more
226 MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES
important than military accomplishments, and that military relations

constituted the entirety of German-Turkish political relations. If Liman
were made to understand this, his relations with Enver would improve,
for he would see that
the recovery of sound and trusted relations to the Turkish officer
corps, and especially to the War Minister, must be more important
than momentary military results."
An alteration of policy had occurred, however, one wrought by Enver.
Gone was the idea of having authority rest solely in German hands; Enver
had demanded that the Turks be accommodated with direct control over
the mission. Mutius expressed this new policy when he cautioned Jagow
that
A too authoritative stance will not be appreciated by the Turks in
the long run. In the end they naturally want to remain masters in
their own house.12
With the exception of Liman, the Germans in Ottoman service accep-
ted the change wholeheartedly, owing to the combination of their hatred
of Liman and devotion to Enver. One week after Mutius expressed his
views, a second cable was sent to the War Ministry in Berlin by Major von
Laffert, the successor of Strempel as military attache in Istanbul. Von
Laffert explained that not only was Liman not getting along with Enver,
but now he was dissociating himself in advance from the effects of the War
Minister's military decisions. Liman wanted it understood by General
von Molkte personally that he disagreed with Enver on the question of
Edirne.13
The city which Enver himself had reconquered, and which had contri-
buted mightily to his legend, he now wanted to abandon without a struggle,
should the Bulgarians attack from the west. There was obvious hypocrisy
in this idea, for scarcely a year earlier Enver had overthrown a govern-
ment expressly to prevent Edirne from falling to the Bulgarians. He had
also used the te§kilat-i mahsusa in July 1913 to establish a 'Provincial
Government of Western Thrace' to organize the defense of the city.14
Above and beyond this, the decision was ridiculous from a military stand-
point. The important railroads of Thrace, a legacy of the Hamidian era,
would be lost, and a defense at Catalca would not be any easier in a large-
scale war than it had been in the Balkan Wars.
As Enver remained unmoved by all of these arguments, Liman asked
that at the very least the artillery be brought back to the Catalca defenses.
To this Enver responded that enough time would remain after the out-
break of hostilities to bring back the artillery, and moreover immediate
withdrawal would cause a panic among the inhabitants of Thrace." This

was a classic Enver move; he was a politician first and soldier second.
When he tried to think like a soldier, his political impatience magnified
his ignorance of the dynamics of large-scale warfare. Amazingly, Enver's
suggestions did not alarm von Laffert.16 A Prussian officer could not
conceive of a War Minister as undisciplined as this; von Laffert saw the
whole affair as part of some wily and elaborate ruse:
I cannot imagine that Enver is so naive as to believe that the entire
war material of Adrianople can be brought back on the rails during
mobilization . . . without a doubt he is one of the bravest and most
dependable of those currently in power . . . I therefore consider

it quite possible that Enver is not at all thinking of giving up
Adrianople.'7
The logic behind this proposed abandonment of Edirne fore-shadowed
the greatest Turkish disaster of the war, defeat by the Russians in the
Battle of §arikamis in Eastern Anatolia in the winter of 1914-15. The
whole §arikamis campaign is punctuated by the same impatience demon-
strated in Enver's comments on Edirne, and the danger-ous potential in
Enver's dominance over his German staff was realized. Hafiz Hakki, a
young officer as brash as Enver and one of the com-manders of the
expedition, spoke of a 'race to §arikamis'18 after the early skirmishes near
the village of Koprukoy, southwest of the Russian out-post of Kars.
When it came to the final march towards §arikamis in late December,
Hafiz Hakki abandoned the idea of a day of rest and left a day early,
boasting that he needed 'a few hours' to destroy the Russians.19 This was
in spite of the fact that the only map the Turks had of the mountainous
region was inaccurate. Nevertheless, when Enver finally accepted his
defeat and decided to return to Istanbul on 8 January 1915, he did not
chastise his commander. Hakki's enthusiasm was appreciated, and he was
both left on the scene and given a promotion.20
Though his plan was a failure, there was a reason for Enver's haste. He
had always had the sense that a European power could crush the Empire
in the long run. It was because of this belief that he had leapt at the chance
for an alliance with Germany. The Ottoman army of 1914 was relatively
strong, and the Russians thought their amy needed 'five years for the
completion of [its] mobilization'.21 This was all the more reason, in Enver's
mind, to attack. The circumstances were not going to get better, he
assumed, for in full mobilization the Russian army had more resources
to draw upon. Enver wanted to forestall, through surprise, years of
trench warfare, which his nation could not maintain. Given the awful
stalemates yet to occur in Europe, Enver was wise to eschew that aspect
of the First World War. Sadly his military education was not up to the
task, and his utter reliance on surprise in a large winter campaign was
unrealistic.
On 1 November the Russians had crossed the border, and on the fifth
the first battles took place around the tiny village of Koprukoy.22 The
tentative Russian attacks had the purpose of establishing the line of con-
tact between the two armies. Enver, of course, saw weakness instead of
prudence in their actions. With his Chief of Staff Bronsart von Schellendorf
in tow he departed for the front. In Istanbul, Wangenheim reported on
the logic behind Enver's departure:
According to the information here the number of Muslim rebels in

the Caucasus has increased to 50,000. These people are more or less
well-armed. Enver thinks the time has come to lead a great strike
against Russia.23
As he would so many times, Enver was relying on popular uprisings
and ethnic support, this time from the Kurds of Eastern Anatolia. Yet the
Kurdish divisions soon dissolved in combat; Koprukoy was briefly occu-
pied but the forces dispersed and '33 columns, mostly Kurdish, left their
positions without fighting and ran'.24 The Kurdish desertions came at an
especially bad time, as another ethnic group, the Armenians, were in
revolt against the Ottomans. Oberstlt. Guse, a German who commanded
part of the §arikamis forces, stated that the suppression of the Armenian
uprising was a huge drain on the army reserves already weakened by
desertion.25 Aydemir reports that he saw the corpses of several thousand
massacred Turks in Anatolia,26 attesting to the state of civil war in the
region when the central government lost its control. Enver's response was
brutal and thorough: deportation. The untrue allegation that the Special
Organization was created to carry out the deportations27 has made
Armenian anger even more focused on Enver.
The failure of this grass-roots campaign with the Kurds and the unclear
reports returning from the Caucasus increased the worry in Istanbul over
the possibility that the Straits might be forced by the English fleet. On
Christmas Eve 1914 Wangenheim wrote that 'since the departure of
Enver unified central command has been lacking'.28 Enver, and not a
respected Prussian officer, was the force holding the empire together.
The ambassador had come full circle, and wanted Enver's authority to
calm the capital.
§arikamis itself, despite its bloodiness, does not need to be recounted,
because Enver's ability to act on his every military whim made the sub-
sequent chaos and death predictable. What staggers one is the shameless
reaction of the Germans, particularly Bronsart von Schellendorf, to the
loss. After a month of watching men die in the snow, Bronsart returned to
Istanbul and noted his surprise at the 'unjustified pessimism' about the
situation; the losses, he remarked, were 'equally large' on both sides and,
most important in Bronsart's version, 'the behaviour of the German
officers, without exception, had been outstanding'.29
Wangenheim either did not notice or did not mind that Enver's Chief
of Staff had separated himself from all of Enver's actions. The com-
mander of the military mission, however, did mind. Liman's warnings
about Edirne had been ignored; he had only with difficulty stopped the
deportation of Armenians around Smyrna;30 and he had refused to accept
command of the Caucasus expedition because he had foreseen a disaster
like §arikamis. Now, he was sure, everyone would awaken to Enver's

true nature. Liman left a letter on Bronsart's desk which he found upon
his return; his resignation was demanded on the grounds that 'he was
guilty for damage to German interests'.31 Von Sanders had not grasped
the strength of Enver's position; the Auswartiges Amt still considered an
insult to Enver the sole means of damaging German interests.
Once again Liman was pushed to the side. The War Minister himself
had grown tired of Liman's interference, and moreover could not allow
Bronsart to resign. That would give the impression that the Germans still
had authority in Enver's army; also, blame on Bronsart would imply that
the Chief of Staff had control of military strategy. Enver blanketed the
press so that knowledge of the §arikamis loss would not escape to the
public, but in military circles he would rather admit a setback than accept
any diffusion of his authority. He assured Bronsart 'that if someone had
to go, it would be Liman von Sanders'.32
After two years of Enver's undisputed control of the military mission,
two changes in German personnel brought the policy back to a realistic
conception of the Ottoman political scene. The first was the change in the
ambassador at Pera. Wangenheim fell ill and was replaced by Wolff-
Matternich,33 who was more vigorous and careful in his appraisal of
matters in the capitol. The other was the 1916 entry of Ludendorff into
the German High Command; with his arrival 'official interest in the
Ottoman Empire once again broadened'.34
Ludendorff, despite his personal regard for Enver, was reluctant to
support his schemes. To mention only one instance, the General did not
support Enver when the War Minister complained about Bulgaria. The
new Ottoman ally, King Ferdinand, was not eager to return lands in
Thrace seized in the Balkan Wars, and Enver wanted High Command
assistance in swaying the Bulgarians. Ludendorff made no move to retrieve
the territory, saying that 'with these wishes Enver exceeds Ottoman goals
for the war'.35 He did his best to placate the Turks, but told the military
attache in Berlin, Zeki Bey: 'I will always support Enver, but they will
never give it back. Why invite doubts now?'36
German generals had stopped trying to please Enver, though they
were still anxious that the War Minister not take offense at their refusals.
On the political side, throughout 1916 the picture of Istanbul's inner
workings that had been presented to Wolff-Metternich was not visible.
The CUP, he wrote, was not led by a few people but was 'a many-headed
organization spread from Istanbul over the whole land'.37 The famous
triumvirate, 'despite their unquestionably large personal influence, are
only puppets in the hands of the dark background figures of the com-
mittee'.38
Wolff-Metternich did not exclude Enver, whom he called 'the most

important man for us', from his comments. The War Minister too would
vanish, he wrote, if the CUP grew tired of his leadership in the war.39
Enver did not like the active mind of the new ambassador, and secured his
dismissal.40 The new awareness among the Germans, however, could not
be erased so easily.
A German agent was present at the CUP Congress in October 1916,
and reported among other matters that a reorganization of the General
Council of the party had taken place, with its membership being reduced
from 32 members to 10.41 Up until a few months before this congress, the
Germans would not have believed any condensation of power in the CUP
possible - unles one of the triumvirate died.
Closing the Congress was a powerful speech by Said Halim Pa§a. Just
before Halim, Enver spoke. His topic was the war goal of the Ottoman
Empire, and that Enver summarized in one sentence: 'The Struggle of the
Empire for Independence.' Noted in his talk were the many occasions on
which his troops 'had held high the Ottoman fighting spirit', and with
characteristic precision 'Enver went into details' about the failures of the
enemy.42
Our German observer was being shown two things from close range.
First, the person whom the Germans had assumed to be an autocrat was
having to explain himself carefully in front of a large group of his peers,
the existence of which Germany had doubted. Second, the justification
Enver had given did not foretell great German influence in Turkey in the
future. The speech should have been quite disheartening for the German
Foreign Ministry.
Also noteworthy is the timing of and reaction to this speech. By 1916
the Ottoman forces had overcome the huge loss at §arikamis, and had
improved enough to score two huge victories, at Gallipoli and at Kut in
Iraq, over the British. The Arabs were not yet in full revolt. The delegates
at the 1916 Congress had in front of them an army commander whom they
respected but who remained an enigma; he had accomplished a great deal
but his motivations were questionable.
Enver gave a speech that was 'greeted for a long period by a careful,
listening silence, and at its conclusion by great applause'.43 The members
were convinced both by the facts and, more crucially, by the slogans.
Independence and pride, these were what the Turks had not felt for
centuries, and Enver was providing a little of both in 1916; they could not
know what the future held. Nor were these naive people; this was the
party of many of republican Turkey's greatest founders. Enver knew
what cords to touch in his peers. Mustafa Kemal did too and adopted the
same themes, in a more coherent and practical form, when he forged the
Turkish Republic.
Tek soz sahibi Enver was, then, not nearly the hub of power everyone
assumed he had become. In 1916, at the highest point in his reforms, he
still had a party to answer to. That he was able to do so successfully
demonstrates the talents he possessed, and the politician's mentality that
placed his notoriety far above that of other young and ambitious soldiers.
Enver's supposed devotion to the Germans dissolved over the issue of
the occupation of Transcaucasia at the close of World War I. For an
indication of what Enver knew, and how realistic he could be, the text of
a letter from his uncle Halil Pa§a, commander of the forces in Azerbaijan,
is helpful. Halil knew very well about the oil wells in the region and recog-
nized why the Germans were so eager to secure a Turkish withdrawal. He
communicated to the War Minister that the capture of the region around
Baku had been costly; roughly three thousand men had been lost. How-
ever, the victory meant far more than land for Turkey:
According to today's prices, the well is worth hundreds of millions
of lira. This well, which fell into our hands as a gift from God, is an
answer to all our material deficiencies.44
The reaction was immediate. Enver wanted Baku, and demanded that
the Germans help him restore the 1877 border to help him in this effort;
Bernstoff in Berlin called this a 'typically oriental' move.45 The lukewarm
response from the Germans was a sign that their respect for Enver had
dwindled to almost nothing. The unstable situation in the region would be
hard to manage, and to ensure local help if the Germans would not
provide it, Enver began to consider going to the eastern shores of the
Caspian Sea himself.46 Turkestan would bolster the region from the east,
Turkey from the west.
The Ottoman state had come to the same end in her relations with the
Germans as she had with the French during the classical age of the Otto-
man Empire; the historical trend of Turkish dedication answered with
treachery was once again visible. Enver had fallen into a very old trap,
and as the war drew to a close he expressed the same bitterness he had felt
against the Europeans during the War with Libya. Enver could only
marvel at the double standard being imposed once again. In a dispatch to
Zeki Pa§a in Berlin, the exasperated War Minister enumerated his com-
plaints.
Chief among Enver's points was the unfair distribution of land. Here
was Germany, Enver noted, which would lose not one inch of its land
owing to the war, telling Turkey not to push into Azeri and Asian terri-
tory.47 Ludendorff, he requested politely, should explain himself. Why,
he asked, was Turkey being denied its rights?
From the Central Alliance only we, in comparison with the popula-
tion and war materials of our allies, for a long time alone, fought the
most powerful enemies and suffered the most losses. Due to the
geographical situation we could not occupy territory, on the contrary
the most critical parts of the nation were occupied by the Russians
and the English . . . . In peacetime one is discouraged from reclaim-
ing them.48
Both sultan and nation, he said, were asking what reward would come
of the alliance. Enver also knew on whose head the blame would fall. The
enormous popularity that had taken him so far was dwindling, and he
realized that his demand for personal control was turning upon him. The
state's fate and his own were intertwined, were in fact synonymous in the
minds of many, and Germany was not supporting him. Turkey's faith in
the alliance had not wavered, he said, even when the capitulations would
have been raised with a promise of her neutrality. Just as he had been sure
that the Italians had held him uppermost in their minds throughout the
Libyan War, now Enver hoped the Germans would respond to Turkey's
needs if they were reminded of his personal dedication. He thus justified
his request for a border change:
Therefore in order to strengthen the present position of the state
and, as I took the greatest responsibility for the administration of
the war upon myself, to strengthen my own position, the result is
a need for a minor correction of the border with Russia in the
Caucasus.49
In August 1918 the Russians pulled out of the region and the English
entered. At the insistence of Seeckt, who still believed in Enver, the
Germans decided to stay neutral.50 General Ludendorff instructed Seeckt
to restrain Enver for 'a fair share of the Baku oil';51 realpolitik was in force
between the Germans and the Ottoman Empire. Enver pointed out the
hypocrisy of his ally: they supported Armenian and Gerogian nationalism
but not that of the Azeris, who were, as propagandists from the region
constantly reminded Enver, soydaf2 with the Ottomans." There was
even a Turkestan CUP to speak for the rights of the 10 million Turks
there.54
Worse still, the Germans had instigated Afghan and other national
revolts, until Russia's fall, upon which there was a reversal back to the
concert of Europe.55 Germany would have none of this reasoning; on
23 May 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm ordered Enver to leave the Caucasus;
Hindenburg relayed the message to Seeckt and complained: 'I can't help
a state behaving this way'.56
All the demands were rejected. Enver had, in one motion, jettisoned
the alliance of convenience he had made with the German Empire. The
provincial government was shifted to Baku after it came under Turkish
control. As Enver knew that the Ottomans would be unable to retain the
region, he hoped to retain ties to the Azeris. He had not learned his lesson
about Western dipomacy and assumed that under Wilson's Fourteen
Points Azerbaijan would be able to stay under the padishah if it voted to
do so.57 The winter of 1918 saw Enver make a bold reformulation of his
policy in the East. He saw that the only way for these Islamic nations to be
recognized was to switch sides. The War Minister told Halil, commander
in the East, to prepare a bribe:
If you stay neutral in this conflict, and if necessary fight against
Bolsheviks, would the English government recognize the freedom
of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus Islamic governments? In the event
they do recognize them they agree to give the English an advantage
from the sources of wealth here.58
On 16 September, on Enver Pa§a's order, his brother Nuri destroyed
the Baku defenses and made Germany an enemy of the Ottoman army.59
Nuri had also cut off the railway and had received a little help from
Turkish villagers,60 a fact which Enver overestimated as a sign that his
tactics would work here.
What Enver wanted from the Germans, what the oil in Baku provided,
and what he would have taken from anyone in the right circumstances,
was money for his country. Uppermost in his mind, at every stage of the
alliance, were the loans he thought the alliance would secure. Of course,
the money would serve the secondary purpose of promoting his position
in the Empire. In fact the record shows that Enver was quite successful in
reversing the tide of exploitation by the Europeans: 'German banks and
business establishments already entrenched in the Ottoman Empire gained
little or nothing from the wartime partnership of the two countries'.61
From the start money dominated the debates. On 30 September 1914,
the Porte asked for 5 million lira, only to be told by Zimmerman that
4.75 million of that sum would arrive after Turkey actually got involved in
the conflict.62 Finally, in October the money arrived (rather miraculously,
as it passed by train through the Balkans) and 'Enver promptly got in
touch with the German embassy to discuss the final preparations for
war.'63 The first priority for Enver was to secure money for his bankrupt
state; the second problem, the war, he considered inevitable. There was
no reason to hesitate for its preparation once the bill had been paid.
Whatever the motivation, it is difficult to excuse such a nonchalant
attitude towards entering a war. §evket Sureyya Aydemir, who lived

through the age, was ambivalent about Enver's approach to the matter.
On the one hand he criticizes the CUP by declaring that every state must
evaluate its financial and social makeup before entering a war; had the
Committee done so, he says, it would have hesitated more.64 Yet the
converse of this argument, and one he himself makes on Enver's behalf, is
that a look at the disastrous Ottoman finances and crumbling society
would make it easier to accept a military alliance. An ally in war might
make a large difference if victorious, and could hardly make matters
worse; Aydemir wrote of the Ottomans in 1914: 'We had been beaten in
the Balkan Wars. We were wounded; we had no technology, no sea
power, and no weapons factories. We needed an alliance.65
Enver's mistake was not that he chose the side of the Central Powers;
he was given little choice in that, no matter how much he may have leaned
that way. In Talat's last speech to the CUP, he explained bluntly what had
occurred in 1914: 'We first followed a policy of pursuing relations with a
strong power. We received a negative reaction from France and England.'66
He, Enver and Halil had agreed when the Germans offered Said Halim a
treaty; Enver played only a small part in the choice of Germany, which
was third among Ottoman preferences for an ally. His sin was impatience
as always. The Empire was given no time to make plans but was thrust
into Enver's vision of what war could accomplish. Cavit complained that
'the Germans will most certainly not win',67 but he also was angry that
Enver had committed himself before and not during the war;68 Enver's
rashness had cost the Ottomans a great deal of bargaining power.
No Ottoman statesman could be immune to the burden of debt, and as
with Enver, many of them viewed the war as almost a period of relief.
Even the sober Cavit,69 leader of the anti-Enver faction in the Cabinet™
and a man whom Enver managed to annoy quite often, was encouraged
by the treaty. Germany, after all, was last among the great powers in
terms of economic control; the French had fifty-nine per cent of the Otto-
man Public Debt under their control.71 As would seem natural, Cavit
immediately waived the capitulations, hardly a surprising step when the

debtor nation was about to face its creditors in war.
To Cavit's astonishment, Ambassador Wangenheim was furious at this
decision. At one point he even assembled all the great power ambassadors
to complain together about their treatment.72 Cavit ignored this, and he
and Enver kept up their requests for more money. Wangenheim had no
enthusiasm for the treaty nor for the situation that was developing in the
world; it does not seem to have struck him that all the influence he and his
colleagues were so eager to acquire might lead to actual conflict. Enver's
proposal for a treaty on 22 July was opposed by Wangenheim, and then
overruled by the Kaiser two days later. Bethmann Hollweg told Wangen-
heim to accept only if Turkey could effectively attack Russia,73 a fact

which the ambassador had little means of judging. Von Molkte, the man
who had cautioned against the military mission, had by now changed
directions: immediately upon the completion of the secret treaty he asked
that 50,000 troops be sent to Odessa, a request even Enver found laugh-
able.74 Eventually Wangenheim was found so slow in his duties that Herr
Kuhlmann was dispatched from Berlin to stir him.75
At every stage of the war Enver intruded into the political discourse
with the Germans and demanded more money. In May 1917 Kuhlmann in
the German embassy cabled Berlin that Enver requested more funds for
the Asian theater owing to the loss of value of the paper money.76 Cavit
supported him77 insisting that at least eight million lira were needed, even
though Enver himself had stated at the CUP congress a year earlier that
the Asian front was not crucial to the outcome of the war.78 In June 1917
the Deutsche Bank tried to change the agreement and asked that the
Zinnschein be placed at 15 DM, a move Cavit and Enver debated for
some time.79 In August 1918 he requested a loan of fifty million pounds, to
be paid off in eleven years, in order to buy the year's harvest. Apparently
the Germans were beginning to understand what was happening and were
stalling on giving the money; Enver exhorted them that 'there is no time
to lose'. Enver was, the report said, 'quite openly sent by Cavit' to ask for
the loan.80 The Turks understood what a good 'banker' their influential
War Minister was.
Periodically Enver's obsession with funds would spill over onto the
battlefield. When the Germans wanted to send General Falkenhayn81 to
the front in the Levant, Cemal and Mustafa Kemal were both furious;
Cemal even demanded that Enver choose between him or the German.
Enver's response did not even mention Falkenhayn by name. He explained
calmly to Cemal that this was a trade-off: in order to get more loans, a
German general had to command in the Levant. Mustafa Kemal, who
had been Cemal's candidate for command of the forces in Syria, was
enraged. In the independent manner for which he was so famous, he said
that a Turk should be in charge and stated that 'we have not given up the
right of choosing for ourselves'.82 Enver had chosen for the Empire, and
had decided to fight a war to revive the Ottoman nation. The Deutsche
Bank was the only vehicle he could find to start that revival. When its
funds dried up, so did Enver's interest in the German alliance.
Talat Pa§a was reburied in Turkey, with full honors, in 1943.83 Enver in
all probability shall remain a disliked figure in the Republic of Turkey for
some time to come. In an article written over thirty years ago, Dankwart
Rustow partially explained why. He commented that 'Ataturk's rivalry
with Enver was proverbial',84 which demonstrates how persistent the myth
of the dichotomy between Enver and his friend had become. Rustow's
work was also groundbreaking in that it showed how great the holdover in
officers was from Enver's era to that of Kemal's.85 The Karakol and Mim
Societies, which supplied Kemal with many of his arms, were 'direct
continuations of Enver's "Special Organization" \86 Karakol, founded in
1918 in Enver's home on the Bosphorus, was a political organization
designed to help former CUP members escape allied troops by going east
into Anatolia; it developed its arms trading capacity during the nationalist
struggle.87 Rauf Orbay, the naval officer who was the greatest rival of
Mustafa Kemal, speaks in his memoirs of the discussions between the
nationalist leader and Kara Kemal, founder of Karakol, in 1919.8lt
Also, Enver's fears of losing the war in the west and south led to the
creation of governments in Baku and other regions of the east, and a
general strengthening of his network in Eastern Anatolia,89 an effort from
which Kemal benefited. The War Minister's gift of organization did not
fail him even after he had left the country.
The hints Rustow himself gives do not support the idea of a long-
standing rivalry. The impression is not one of Kemal winning a long
struggle with Enver, but rather of a succession from the latter to the
former, Kemal rising above Enver's fame after a period of obscurity.
Erich Jan Zurcher asserts that Enver had no reciprocal hatred for Kemal
and did not need to have any; he had more serious rivals such as Cemal
and Hafiz Hakki Pasa.90 Also among the list Zurcher gives of Enver's
rivals is Eyup Sabri, who joined Enver among the officers who fled to the
hills of Macedonia in July 1908; Eyup Sabri could never overcome the
self-promotional skills of Enver. The historian Yusuf Hikmet Bayur
comments on Enver's defection: 'if he had worked a bit, this action, like
that of Niyazi and Eyup Sabri Beys, would not have been exposed'.91
Mustafa Kemal was not a serious threat to Enver, neither in the military
nor in politics. Kemal's own cell of the CUP, begun before Enver's, dis-
solved in 1906 when Kemal was forced to return to his military post in
Syria.92 Talat, Halil, Enver and others took up the political slack and
formed the lasting CUP body, which Kemal could never dominate; he
was out of the picture.
That is not to say that Kemal was not fiercely jealous of Enver, or that
the War Minister did not oppose certain promotions Kemal should have
received;93 both are probably true. Undeniable, however, is the fact that
the two were of entirely different natures and had little opportunity to
explore either a real or potential rivalry. In fact, had the Ottoman govern-
ment been as militarily based as the Germans imagined, Mustafa Kemal
would have probably been the Generalissimo. The Ottoman Empire,
however, never stopped being a political unit, and Enver was an excellent
politician. None of the republican historiography which calls Kemal 'the

spiritual father of the revolution of 1908 . . . robbed of his rightful position
by the intrigues of the other members of the Committee, especially
Enver',94 alters the fact that Mustafa Kemal's Salonika initiative had
failed, and the reins were picked up by politically astute people on the
scene. One of them, through this kind of luck and astuteness, would
become War Minister shortly thereafter.
Before the supposed rivalry ever came into being, then, Enver was
already famous. The 1908 Revolution had made him into a hero of free-
dom; babies were named after him, and posters bearing his face were
spread around Salonika. The great Ahmet Cevdet Pa§a compared him to
Midhat Pa§a, a previous crusader against autocracy.95 Coupled with
Enver Bey in this celebration was another young soldier, Niyazi Bey;
their prominence was a little superior to that of Eyup Sabri after the
revolution began.
The two soldiers were never friends, never rode in the same celebratory
processions, and were in fact 'in their personal temperaments two totally
different people'.96 The difference was that Enver had political instincts
far above his colleague's, and Niyazi was soon to fade from view until his
untimely death at the hands of Albanian terrorists in the spring of 1913.
The twenty-seven-year-old Enver had chosen a political path by speaking
on behalf of the CUP on 11 July 1908.97 As early as April 1908 he had
served with Talat on a CUP committee,98 and he raised no complaints
when the former Director of Telegraphs began making political arrests
and taking over.99 Enver's first speech was unemotional - he was less
excited than the Bulgarian bishop of Salonika - but immediatey focused
on himself: 'Friends! Here you behold me. I was a binba§i. . ."°°
Kemal was making similar attempts at inspirational talks in Tripoli in
1908, and the Italian consul on the scene was impressed by the 'eloquent
and fluent speaker' who had an 'emergetic character and resolute temper'.l01
Unfortunately these things did not count for much in Arabic-speaking
Libya, far from the real center of political action. Enver had a running
start on Mustafa Kemal, a lead he would not relinquish until the Battle of
Sakarya. Enver's omnipresent nature must have been quite annoying;
when weapons came from Germany during the counterrevolution and
after, they arrived stamped with the unusual destination of 'Enverland'.
The flamboyant French general Franchet d'Esperey, when he entered
Istanbul in triumph in 1918, wanted to sack Dolmabache Palace; when told
the job had already been done, he demanded to be taken to Enver's home!m
Even the subject of language reform, one of the hallmarks of Atatiirk's
modernization reforms, was touched upon by Enver. In 1914 he developed
a clumsy way of writing Arabic script that was more phonetical than
Ottoman, and gave it the modest name Enver yazisi - Enver Script.103
With Enver's sudden dominance, 'some junior officers could not help but
be upset'. Aydemir names this jealousy of his commander as a possible
cause of Atatiirk's resolution to separate the army from politics.104
The gap between their ranks did not erase the fact that the two men
were close acquaintances, and Kemal often wrote quite personal com-
plaints to his commander-in-chief. There exists in Kemal's rapport with
Enver both jealousy and frustration, for Kemal's own pride was hurt
having to serve under German officers. This was a 'weakness'105 on the
part of Kemal, who was constantly held at arm's length by Enver. As he
desperately wanted larger bodies of men to command and more autonomy,
Kemal was always communicating with Istanbul. Enver for his part was
reluctant to remove German officers as it would endanger his capital flow.
He did not reciprocate the personal tone of his best field commander; he
did not visit Kemal's post, and in his replies to letters the War Minister
adopted a 'reserved and cautious' stance.106
At Gallipoli this pattern was repeated. A Fifth Army Group was
created on 24 March 1915, for the defense of the Straits and offered to
Liman von Sanders.107 Kemal came under his command. Enver came to
the site on 11 May but did not meet Kemal; he had more pressing prob-
lems. The German officers on the scene, von der Goltz, Liman and von
Uzedum, were so petty that they could not work together.108 Adding to
the confusion was the question of who was to give orders, as the shuffling
of the military misson's hierarchy had left much in doubt.
Kemal had an inkling of the chaos to follow if the command situation
were not improved. He requested that the maneuvers pass directly under
the control of Enver's staff, which then included Ismet (Inonu) and
Kazim (Karabekir) Beys. He appealed to the War Minister to come to the
front for an inspection, but also to remove some power from the Germans
who, as he put it, 'Have not fought with blood and conscience for the
fatherland as we have!"09
This argument made some impression on Enver, though not as signifi-

cant as might be expected from one who put so much into making the
Ottoman forces proud again. Kemal kept telephoning headquarters and
demanding more autonomy from Karabekir at headquarters. When at
last he threatened to resign, Liman involved himself directly and told
Enver that it would be a tragedy to lose such an officer. Enver allowed
Karabekir to grant Kemal a little more initiative and wrote a noncommital
letter expressing his regret that his friend was so upset.110
Kemal felt his abilities hampered by the military confusion Enver had
created, yet he had only the most extreme means, resignation, to which to
resort in order to change the situation. Gallipoli therefore turned out to

be much more indicative of Enver's military style than Kemal's. The
defense of the Straits was extremely bloody, offered almost no oppor-
tunity to retreat, but could make some men famous through bravery
under the worst conditions. This is exactly what happened to Kemal,
whose legendary status began with this defense. This, though, was a battle
he had salvaged, not desired. Winston Churchill, creator of the Entente
strategy at Gallipoli, met Enver's son years later. The Former First Lord
of the Admiralty did not mention Kemal, but told the young man, 'Your
father set my life back twenty years."" Thanks to Kemal, 'Enverland' had
survived, and Churchill's comment is a good summary of the relationship
between the two throughout the war.
True hatred of Enver's policies began to grow in Kemal as the
incompetent command in the Levant began to take its toll. Constant
problems were erupting between the Turkish officers and the German
generals, particularly Falkenhayn, who 'totally relied on his German
staff and ignored the Turks.112 Enver's reponse to the complaints was
merely evasive.113 The Ottoman forces steadily collapsed back upon
Damascus, which had ceased to be an Arab city. Kemal found Germans
on every street; Husein Hilmi reported German flags on the hotels and
even a German police force.The police could not keep the English out,
and Kemal made a miraculous escape from the city after being surrounded.
His exhausted troops made a painful retreat to the north."4 His hatred
was focused on two men, Falkenhayn and von Kress, whose incompetence
had cost his troops dearly. Right below this feeling, of course, was fury at
Enver, the man who had put the burden of German commanders on his
head.
In February 1918 Falkenhayn was removed from the command of the
Yildirim Ordu, the Ottoman 'thunderbolt army' in the Levant, and
replaced by Liman;115 von Kress would reappear in Georgia to trouble
Enver again. Later, Liman was in turn replaced by Kemal as commander
of the Army Group F on 30 October 1918. "6 The order was given by Izzet,
who had fled for his safety in July of 1908 to avoid the CUP purge,"7 had
returned to his old post during the war, and now was in power with the
collapse of the CUP."8 When Kemal finally reached Istanbul from the
Levant on 2 November he found Enver had already escaped."9
The rivalry was about to begin in earnest. Enver wound his way back
from his haven in Germany and ended up in Russia, trying to draw mili-
tary and financial help from the Bolsheviks for his vague plans in Trans-
caucasis. When he realized that he had truly lost his position, Enver did
not begrudge Kemal's talent, commenting: 'No one other than Mustafa
Kemal Pa§a should command the army."2" Kemal agreed.
With the end of hostilities between Poland and the new Soviet state in
August 1920, Enver could avoid the dangers of flying and travel easily
from Berlin to Moscow by rail.121 He could also start serious attempts at
negotiating with the Russians. General Seeckt,122 his former Staff Chief,
was still a close contact for Enver in Germany. Under the pseudonym of
Ali, the former War Minister told Seeckt of his newest endeavor:
I had a conversation with Sklanski, the deputy and right-hand man
of Trotsky . . . a party here which has real power and to which
Trotsky belongs . . . see only one way out of the world's chaos:
cooperation with Germany and Turkey. . . [asks] if possible to give
some unofficial help, for example reports about the Polish army,
and if possible to have arms sold and smuggled.123
Enver kept Mustafa Kemal informed of his plans by correspondence
and displayed no understanding that he was not wanted back in Anatolia.
The provincial government had not, however, immediately cut ties to
Enver's camp. Ismet Inonu had openly doubted the loyalty of Kazim
Karabekir,124 whom Enver had brought into the CUP. A dejected Karabekir
told a friend in 1921, 'Ankara has doubts about me'.125 Halil Pa§a had
Kemal's personal permission to make contacts with the Russians.126 Only
later was Halil expelled from the base he had set up in Trabzon,127 and
afterwards turned away when he arrived with money to negotiate with the
Kemalists about arms.128
Enver and Cemal Pa§a were not receiving the message that neither they
nor their associates were wanted in the new Turkey.129 Nor, in Enver's
case, was there a sense of the political damage caused by losing a world
war. With the same flippancy that he had entered the conflict, Enver
remarked in 1918: 'We have lost the game.'130 When the German boat
U-67 reached its homeland in 1918 with the CUP leaders on board, it was
Talat of all people who tried to restrain Enver's optimism by telling him
'our political lives are over'.131 Enver met Kemal's delegates at the first
Conference of the Peoples of the East. The speech he gave, which was
read out by someone else, displayed the extent of his cynicism; after four
years of scrambling for German money, he declared that he was sickened
by German capitalism. He defended his recent actions by saying that he
had 'left a comfortable life in Berlin . . . to turn away invaders; I have no
other goal in Azerbaijan'.132 Enver said in a letter that 'along with my
other jobs I will work with them'.133 However, his obvious insincerity did
not make Ankara eager for his help. The delegates were frank in their
wariness of Enver's offer of assistance, and he assured them that he was
'not in the mood to fight anyone with the country in this condition'.134
In Ankara, Kemal had made several choices on his policy towards
Enver and his group. With Enver he had no communications, and chose
instead to write to Cemal, whose relations with Enver had always been
strange. He admired and respected the younger man's position but could
never really overcome his jealousy; this was fine with Enver, who had
never contacted Cemal during the seven months after the war when they
were both in Germany.135 Kemal thought the old pa§a might be useful in
gaining ties to the Russians, but Kemal cautioned Cemal that he should
not scare them off with talk of Pan-Islam.136 This was a fruitful connection,
for 'Cemal and Halil seem to have done much to prepare the Bolshevik-
Kemalist rapprochement';"7 and there is little actual aggression towards
Cemal in their correpondence, merely sternness. Kemal was always care-
ful, however, to steer his friend away from Enver and the latter's wild
schemes. He told Cemal:
You cannot imagine the scope of the revolution here. None of us

can act without the approval of the meclis. . . there is no hope in the
threat that 'if you do this or that Enver will come in. As a friend I
advise you to examine the reality of a revolt based on Islam'.138
Merely writing this shows that Mustafa Kemal was worried about the
prospect of Enver's return. This was especially true because Enver
remained so indifferent to the authority of the new government. He
communicated all his plans to Ali Fuad (Cebesoy), who in turn sent them
on to a very unnerved Ankara.139 However, the former War Minister was
not gaining ground. Several of his old Arab and teskilat-i mahsusa officers
resigned at Baku, because they had grasped the obvious fact that Enver
was not committed to Pan-Islam.140
This was rather ungrateful, for even though Enver was insincere he did
not forget his allies. His last order to his teskilat chief was for the protection
and preservation of Arab and Muslim agents.141 Money, though, had
stopped being a means which could secure dedication. Indeed, Karakol
and other appendages of Enver had dissolved into a collection of
sycophants. The common response to a need for money on the part of an
agent anywhere in the world was simply, 'Have Enver send it."42
By the time of his disappearance into Asia, both emotional and political
adherents of Enver knew the game was up. His own supporters in Ankara
were contacting Mustafa Kemal in 1921, asking the new ruler of Anatolia
to send one of them to convince Enver not to return.143 The Soviets were
not convinced either, but found Enver a useful tool to steer Kemal. They
gave him 200,000 rubles, of which he saved ten months' income for
himself. The rest went right back into his various organizations, including
the Karakol agents and the family of the assassinated Talat.144 There had
indeed been rumors that Enver would use this money to enter Anatolia
with an army, and in 1921 he was in Batum145 when Kemal destroyed the
Greeks at Sakarya. Sami Sabit Karaman, who was in Trabzon in late
1921, saw that the power of Enver's memory was very real. The analogy
he drew, appropriately, was of the feeling France had when Napoleon
returned from Elba.146 While in Batum, however, Enver was not summon-
ing popular support. He was in the pathetic position of not being able to
venture out at night; Armenian agents were searching for him147 to finish
off another member of the triumvirate of pa§as. The 'trump card of the
Russians"48 had been played; Enver could no longer threaten Kemal's
position in Anatolia.
Long before his trip to Turkestan, and even before Sakarya, people
close to Enver had tried to impress upon him the slim chance for success
east of Anatolia. As far back as 1918, on Izzet Pa§a's insistence, the
German military authorities in the Ukraine tried 'to prevent Enver's
departure for the Caucasus and to make it clear that he would be welcome
in Germany'.149 With Seeckt's persistent appeals they opened contact with
Enver again, but never in a serious manner. No encouragement came
from Halil, either, not even in the early post-war stages. Enver wanted to
create in Azerbaijan a situation like that in Libya, where careful planning
and public support could overcome huge differences in military capability.
The sum of 700,000 liras was sent to the region and Enver wrote to Halil
Pa§a, 'we will be forced to withdraw our troops and have to rely on the
Azeris' own troops . . . we must strengthen our organization'.150
Halil was not convinced. Earlier he had been ordered to confer with
English and American forces in Tehran, but that order was quickly
rescinded in favor of the te§kilat method. Halil told his nephew that 'these
people surround us and claim to be our ancestors, but will abandon us
once we arrive'.'" While Enver seldom took his own rhetoric seriously, he
somehow could not believe that others would not respond to it. Halil's
warning regarding Azerbaijan was ignored, and Enver later made the
same mistake, this time fatally, in his Central Asian adventure.
After the Azeri initiative with the English proved ineffectual, he leapt
into Bolshevik politics with less than full conviction. On the anniversary
of the Bolshevik revolution, Enver gave two speeches recounting its
glory.152 Already, however, he was planning to fight against the Russians,
if an agreement could finally be made with the English and the French.
Enver knew this to be risky, and cautioned that 'unless we are totally
helpless with the Russians it is dangerous to act on this now'.153
Enver's Great-Power relations must have interested Mustafa Kemal to
the utmost. It was true that the Soviets were helping Kemal, but should
Enver make a successful plea for English support it would be a disaster.
For his part Enver saw no further reason to maintain cordiality with
Ankara, and for propaganda purposes tried to place the Kemalists in the
Bolshevik camp. He complained that 'Ankara's recent tendency is toward
personal dictatorship and the direction of the Russians'.154 By this point,
of course, Enver's chance was over. The security afforded by the triumph
at Sakarya did not lessen, and the message from Ankara to Cemal Pa§a,
until his assassination in Azerbaijan, was clear: 'We will support you if
you purge certain undesirables."55
What Kemal wanted was obvious, but he had no need to worry; Enver
was taking himself out of international politics. The Soviets had chosen to
support the Ankara government, and Enver had taken up one last cause,
that of Pan-Turanism. In October 1921 Enver arrived in Bukhara in
Turkestan.156 He stayed for 23 days, during which he conferred with Zeki
Velidi Togan, leader of a loose coalition of leftist groups called the
Turkestan National Union, and like Enver a participant in the Confer-
ence of the Peoples of the East at Baku.157 Togan cautioned that rabble-
rousing in the region would lead to nothing, especially since Enver 'had
little knowledge of the geography or demographics of Turkestan'.158
Lack of factual information had never restrained Enver; he departed
for the Basmachi region and arrived on 8 November 1921. Immediately
he noticed people responding to the presence of a member of the caliphal
family, and without discouraging their enthusiasm warned them not to
speak of him to the authorities.159 Just as he had done in Libya when his
German friends published reports of his whereabouts, Enver was willing
to give up some security to publicize himself.
How deluded Enver had become is demonstrated by his encounter
with the Lakai tribe of the Basmachi region. Far from respecting Enver's
royal status, these Basmachis first stole his weapons and then imprisoned
him for three months. From the dirt-floored room where he had been
incarcerated, Enver wrote with surprise to his wife Naciye Sultan, 'Every-
thing is confused. There is none of the Benghazi cordiality here."60 This
was true. Even after his release, when he managed to assemble a small
force of Basmachis, the only similarities between them and the Libyan
Arabs were the lamentable ones of poverty, ignorance, and the inability
to load or fire a weapon correctly.161
Meanwhile, the new powers in Russia were preparing to punish Enver
for his vacillations. A propaganda campaign was begun associating him
with the English,162 in a situation opposite to that of his Libyan campaign,
Enver was associated with an oppressive great power in the minds of the
people. While Enver was still being held by Ibrahim Bey, the Basmachi
leader, the Politburo in Moscow voted to crush the Basmachi move-
ment .163 There is little point in carefully recounting the long summer up to
Enver's death on 8 August 1922.164 Togan had been right about Enver's
ignorance of the area. The awful heat of the steppe summer reduced the
number of Enver's already small band of soldiers;lfl5 it hurt the Russians as
well, but not their machine guns. In a typically brave and irrational assault,
Enver was shot from his horse while leading 25 cavalrymen up a slope
towards a machine gun nest.166
Enver's effectiveness as a political figure had died much earlier, after
the Battle of Sakarya, and while still in Bukhara he was reading the first
printed attack on his legend: German friends had sent him a copy of
Liman von Sanders' FunfJahre in der Turkei.w After his obscure death,
Enver's memory was reduced to romantic mythology. One of his opera-
tives, Haci Sami, was captured by the English while fleeing east; because
of his haughty manner, they refused to believe that their prisoner was
anyone other than the Ottoman War Minister. 'Who but Enver,' they
wondered, 'could have had such arrogance?'l68 Hundreds of bright young
officers of this age had his arrogance, but few combined it with his talents.
After the disastrous loss in the world war and a bizarre death, Enver's
solid accomplishments were forgotten. Any Young Turk with enough
bravado could become his stand-in.
Enver had never accepted the rivalry of Mustafa Kemal until it was
forced upon him. With no army, his popular support gone, shuttling
between Germany and the Soviet state as a gun runner, Enver still
managed to unnerve one of the greatest figures of this century. Almost
literally until his dying day Enver cast a long shadow over the affairs and
ambitions of Mustafa Kemal. Thus the shadow of Kemal's hatred of him
has hovered for seven decades over Enver's memory.
CONCLUSION
Warfare is the surest vehicle through which great historical figures may
accrue guilt or fame. This is as true of Enver Pa§a as of any other per-
sonality. The impact of war, however, can obscure the overall context in
which that personality made itself felt. Enver is a man stamped by and
linked to the First World War, which he entered on the losing side.
Lost from our memories are the realities of the late Ottoman Empire.
The Engish historian B.H. Sumner wrote, 'The Ottoman Empire fell, but
from a great height'. The fall was not a sudden slip occurring in 1914, but
had begun centuries earlier. The Concert of Europe finally brought the
Empire into the Western fold, but as a junior and impotent partner.
Europe itself was divided on the issue of Turkey, between the practical
gains from the capitulations and the traditional antipathy towards the
greatest Muslim power. One need look no further than the struggle
between Disraeli and Gladstone in England to see this principle in action.
The former supported the Turk as a bridge against Russia. The latter
coined the nickname 'Terrible Turk' in reference to the misnamed
Bulgarian Atrocities, a harbinger of the nationalist passions that would
engulf the great powers thirty-five years later.
Humiliated in battle by the Gladstones of Europe since the seven-
teenth century, and left bankrupt by less well-meaning Disraelis in the
nineteenth, the Ottomans made a decision. They chose to re-emphasize
the Islamic nature of the Empire as they modernized, and to resist the
Europeans as much as they could. Leading the effort was the target of
Gladstone's wrath, his 'Red Sultan' Abdulhamid II. Recently Abdulhamid
has been recast as resourceful rather than vicious, as historians free them-
selves from the bias of their predecessors in Ottoman studies.
The question remains whether Enver deserves the same revision. For
whatever his role in the movement against Abdulhamid, in his philosophy
he was in a direct line with the Sultan. The extent of Enver's belief in
Islam is impossible to determine; it may have been little more than an
extension of his prodigious gift of posturing. What can be shown is that
Enver had a disdain for Western hypocrisy that can safely be called
devout. This is the clearest strain of thought in his comments from three
wars: the war over Libya, the Balkan Wars, and World War I.
In the first war, naked imperialism struck at a people devoted to the
Islamic nature of the Ottoman Empire. In the second, Turkish villages
suffered their own atrocities at the hands of Balkan armies, with not a
word from Europe. In the last, Islamic governments and the government
of Turkey proper were denied the rights of freedom upon which the new
peace was founded.
One does not have to defend Enver's dedication to these peoples, nor
explain which 'ism', for his race or his faith, motivated him. He was not a
champion of the independence of anyone, no matter how much he claimed
to be. Enver was interested in the maintenance of Ottoman prestige and,
by extension, of his own. It simply struck him as unjust that Europeans,
even his allies, should be constantly rebuking his state for its cold-
bloodedness while forgetting their own.
War was the only means Enver saw for the removal of such a constant
and destructive double standard. In this, his greatest flaw, he should have
been swayed by his own accomplishments. Libya and the Balkan Wars,
despite their ferocity, were skirmishes from which the Ottomans emerged
stronger than before. They were fighting back and, thanks to a great
degree to Enver, their armed forces were tightening up. Had the state
resisted the call of the great conflict, it could have shrunk painfully down
to its present size with less loss of life.
Yet this process, given the pride of Enver and his contemporaries, was
not possible. Young Turk officers had tasted a bit of their past and had
foolishly thought themselves strong enough to rejoin the great military
powers of the world -just because they were allied with one. Enver in fact
knew that a process of slow dismemberment was coming, and did not
believe it was possible for it to be halted at Istanbul. Given the stance of
Europe towards the Turk, what would make the Russians stop once they,
and not the Bulgarians, arrived at the defenses of £atalca? Nothing.
In retrospect Enver was incorrect. Mustafa Kemal took up the organi-
zation Enver and his cronies had constructed in Anatolia. He modified
the te$kilat-i mahsusa methods of ethnic resistance to the Europeans, and
applied them to one people - the Anatolian Turks. Kemal received aid
from a great power too, the newest one, the Bolshevik Russians. Yet
Kemal's advisors never distracted him from the rigidity of his goals of one
state and one people. Kemal was never glib with his goals, and never
tainted the sincerity of his belief in them, as Enver did, by changing his
loyalties to suit political needs. This unwavering determination was what
had prevented Kemal, in the short term, from overtaking Enver in the
political arena.
A famous aphorism on Atatiirk says that he was a carver and not a
polisher. This is the opposite of the truth, and a distortion of history
designed to place a wall between Atatiirk and his predecessors. Republic
Turkey, in this view, was purely a creation of his genius. Yet Abdulhamid
and the Young Turks, Enver chief among them, had been carving fiercely
on the demoralized Ottoman society for decades. Mustafa Kemal took up
the chisel from Enver, and polished the War Minister's grandiose dreams
into a unified, stable society. He polished with the two tools Enver had
never possessed, and whose absence made his record tragic: true military
genius and inherent self-control.
The task then is to assess what blame is Enver's and what belongs to his
age. An attempt has been made to defend Enver's patriotism if not his
judgement. For the greatest guilt assigned to Enver has been that of
ENVER PASA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 247
Turkey's entry into the War, because of his treason on behalf of Germany.
It has been shown that Enver's involvement with the Germans began
through personal friendships, and not because he particularly wanted
Germany as an ally. In the development of German policy in the Orient
he was a disaster. Germany gained nothing, neither financially nor politi-
cally, through Enver's rise to the War Ministry. He determinedly subjec-
ted their well-laid plans to his whims.
Also defended in this essay are Enver's skills as a leader. His charisma
and earnest devotion to the Ottoman army, and in fact to any army with
which he was associated, are attested to numerous times. Arabs, Germans,
Hamidian and Republican Turkish officers, and many others praised his
abilities. Our criticism then stems from Enver's personal nature, from his
two sides. One was for public consumption, calm underpressure, confi-
dent, efficient and productive. The other was emotional, and contained
an ego that was stroked to the point that Enver lost his judgement.
Separated from reality, puffed up by his renown, Enver strutted into
various disasters. In the end Enver's life is marred by the power of his
personality. Enver's charisma distorted his image and gave him a military
renown he did not deserve. Sadly that same magnetism, as it increased his
influence, took him away from the orgnaizational tasks that could display
his dedication and skill. Historians have forgotten the resurgence of
Ottoman pride and the change in Enver's army, and have remembered
his foolishness in battle. The source of the boasts is erased, and only the
braggart lasts.
NOTES
1. Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918 (Princeton, NJ,
1968),p.70-l.
2. Ibid.,p.89.
3. Jehuda L. Wallach, Anatomie einer Militarhilfe: Die preussich-deutschen Militar-
missionen in der Turkei 1835-1919 (Diisseldorf, 1976), p.84.
4. Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, p. 100.
5. Ibid.,p.69.
6. Sevket Surreya Aydemir, Makedonya'dan Ortaasya'ya Enver Pasa, 3 vols. (Istanbul,
1985), Vol.3, pp.381-2.
7. Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, pp. 103-4.
8. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.2, p.544.
10. Politische Archiven des Auswartiges Amts, Bonn, Germany. Turkei 139 R13260.
17 Feb. 1914. Mutius an Jagow. Hereafter cited as A A.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. AA Turkei 139 R13260.25 Feb. 1914. Von Laffert an Kriegsministerium.
14. Philip Hendrick Stoddard, 'The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911-1918:
A Peliminary Study of the Teskilati-i Mahsusa' (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univesity,
(1963), p.53.
15. Ibid.
16. Von Laffert was later dismissed at Liman's urging (Wallach, Anatomie, p. 147).
17. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
21. AATurkei 139 R13259. Petersburg, 3 Jan. 1914. EggelinganKriegsministerium.
22. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, pp. 110-1.
23. AA Turkei 139 R13262. 6 Dec. 1914. Wangenheim an AA.
24. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p. 115.
25. Guse, 'Die Kampfe des Weltkrieges an der Kaukasusfront vom Kriegsausbruch bis
zum Frieden von Brest' in Schweizerische Monatschrift fur Offiziere aller Waffen und
Organ fur Kriegs wissenschaft. 41 jahrgang (Bern, 1929). Installment #6, p.19.
26. Aydemir,Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.463.

27. Ibid.
28. AA Turkei 134 R13194.24 Dec. 1914. Wangenheim an AA.
29. AA Turkei 139 R13263. Telegram no.199,23 Jan. 1915. Wangenheim an AA.
30. Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, p.244.
31. AA Turkei 139 R13263. Telegram no.200.23 Jan. 1915. Wangenheim an AA.
32. Ibid.
33. Wallach, Anatomie, p. 179.
36. Ibid.
37. AA Turkei 198 R14162. Metternich an Bethmann Hollweg, 5 Aug. 1916.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire,p .127'.
41. AA Turkei 198 R14162. Botschaft an Berlin. 7 Oct. 1916.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
46. Ibid.,p.l73.
47. At one point Enver even ordered Karabekir to occupy Tehran, an indication of how
unrealistic his understanding of the situation was. (Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3,
pp.417-19.)
48. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, pp.371-3.21 Dec. 1918. Enver to Zeki.
49. Ibid.
51. Ibid.,p.l91.
52. 'Of the same stock.'
54. Ibid., Vol.3,p.432.
55. Ibid., Vol.3,p.411.
56. Ibid., Vol.3,p.414.
57. Ibid., Vol.3,pp.425-30.
58. Ibid., Vol.3,p.442.22Dec. 1918.
59. Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, pp.196—7.
62. Ibid.,p.48.
63. Ibid.,p.51.
64. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, pp.25-6.
65. Ibid.,pp.535-6.
ENVER PAS.A AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 249
66. Ibid.,Vol.3,p.455.
67. Ibid.,Vol.2,p.524.
68. Ibid.,Vol.2,p.523.
69. Cavit was born in Salonika in 1875, was a bank manager and then Minister of Finance
(Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.2, p.520).
71. Ibid.,p.ll.
74. Ibid.,p.36.
75. Ibid.,p.46.
76. AA Turkei 110 R12612.30 May 1917. Kuhlmann an Berlin.
77. The paper currency was not even accepted in some areas, such as Syria, which took
only gold. (Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.35.)

78. AA Turkei 198 R14162.7 Oct. 1916. Therapia an Berlin.
79. AA Turkei 110. 6 June 1917. 'Bitten wir das AA . . . die Uberweisung der genannten
Beitrage zum 15 DM an uns gutigst befurwerten zu wollen.'
80. AA Turkei 110 R12612.GrafRoedern an Berlin. 18 Aug. 1917.
81. Falkenhayn was one of the more despised of the German generals in the war. The
Turks hated him for abandoning Jerusalem; Ali Fuat Cebesoy would gain his fame
defending it (Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.306).
82. Ibid.,Vol.3,p.312.
84. D. A. Rustow, 'The Army and the Founding of the Turkish Republic', World Politics,
No.4(1959),p.522.
85. Rustow quotes Halide Edip, 'Every man in this country was once a Unionist' ('The
Army', p.521).
85. Ibid.,p.54O.
87. Eric Jan Zurcher, The Unionist Factor: The Committee of Union and Progress in
Turkish Politics 1905-1926(Boulder, CO, 1984), pp.80-5.
88. Ibid.,pp.ll3-15.
89. Rustow,'The Army', p.541.
90. Zurcher, The Unionist Factor, p .47'.
91. Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Turklnkilabi Tarihi, Vol.1,Part 1 (Ankara, 1952),p.439.
92. Zurcher, The Unionist Factor, p.36.
93. Mustafa Kemal was granted a single increase in rank for the defense of Gelibolu
(Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.235) and his progression up the promotional
ladder was slower than contemporaries such as Cemal or Halil Pashas. On 1 Nisan 1916
he became Pa§a, 27 Ocak 1916 Kolordu Kumandani.
94. Zurcher, The Unionist Factor, \>.21.
96. Ibid.,p.32.
97. Ibid.,p.l3.
98. Ibid.,p.28.
99. Ibid., p.53. The Turkish word Aydemir uses for Talat's taking over is benimsemek.
100. Ibid., p. 14. Binbasi is a low-ranking Turkish officer, literally 'head of a thousand men'.
101. Rachel Simon, 'Prelude to Reforms: Mustafa Kemal in Libya', in Jacob Landau (ed.),
Ataturkandthe Modernizaton of Turkey (Boulder, CO, 1984), p.22.
103. G.L. Lewis, 'Atatiirk's Language Reform as an Aspect of Modernization in the
Republic of Turkey', in Landau (ed.),Atatiirk, p. 197.
104. Aydemir,Makedonya'dan,Vo\.2,pA77.
105. Ibid.,Vol.3,p.248.
106. Ibid.,p.241.
109. Ibid.,Vol.3,p.241.
110. Ibid.,pp.245-7.
111. Ibid.,p.219.
114. Ibid.,pp.332-6.
115. Ibid.,p.332.
118. Talat's cabinet fell on 14 Dec. 1918 (Aydemit,Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.448) ending
the political power of the man who started the political jailings that so unnerved Izzet.
121. Ibid.,p.517.
122. F.L. Carsten, 'The Reichswehr and the Red Army', Survey, No.44/45 (1962), p.l 17.
123. Ibid.
124. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3,p.581.
125. Sami Sabit Karaman, IstiklalMucadelesive Enver Pasa, p.30.
126. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan,Vol.3, p.533.
127. Ibid.,p.52O.
128. Ibid.,p.539.
129. In fairness to Enver, it should be noted that his Anatolian networks functioned
extremely well; he had palpable signs of his influence, such as revolts in his favor,
organized by Karakol, in May 1920 in Trabzon (Zurcher, The Unionist Factor, p. 123).
131. Ibid.,p.472.
132. Ibid.,p.545.
133. Ibid.,p.538.
134. Ibid.,p.528.
135. Ibid.,p.499.
136. Ibid.,p.52O.
137. Rustow,'The Army', p.531.
138. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan,Vol.3,p.564.
139. Ibid.,p.572.
140. Ibid.,p.556.
141. Ibid.,p.51O.
142. Ibid.,p.571.
145. Ibid.,p.554.
146. Karaman, Istiklal, p.20.
148. Ibid.
151. Ibid., p.443. Halil to Enver, 23 Ekim 1918.
152. Ibid.,p.6O7.
153. Ibid.,p.552.
154. Ibid.,p.561.
155. Ibid.,p.564.KemaltoCemal,12Jan. 1922.
156. Olaf Caroe, Soviet Empire: The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (New York, 1953),
p. 127.
157. Ibid.,p.ll9.
158. Ibid.
160. Ibid.,p.619.
161. Ibid.,p.63O.
162. Ibid.,p.628.
163. Ibid., p.627. The decision was made on 1 March 1922.
164. Caros, Soviet Empire, p.124.
166. Caroe, Sov/erEmpire, p. 124.
167. Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.591. Oman's book, Five Years in Turkey in
English, is thoroughly critical of his former commander.
168. Glenda Fraser, 'Had Sami and the Turkestan Federation', Asian Affairs, Vol.74
(1987).

The Desperate Ottoman: Enver Paşa and The German Empire: Haley1994

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From November 1914 to October 1918 the direction of Ottoman

Turkey's War Minister, though, was widely thought to possess a veto

Caucasus.9 As a compromise, and because Enver despised Liman, General

important than military accomplishments, and that military relations

withdrawal would cause a panic among the inhabitants of Thrace." This

dependable of those currently in power . . . I therefore consider

According to the information here the number of Muslim rebels in

like §arikamis. Now, he was sure, everyone would awaken to Enver's

Wolff-Metternich did not exclude Enver, whom he called 'the most

attitude towards entering a war. §evket Sureyya Aydemir, who lived

immediately waived the capitulations, hardly a surprising step when the

heim to accept only if Turkey could effectively attack Russia,73 a fact

politician. None of the republican historiography which calls Kemal 'the

This argument made some impression on Enver, though not as signifi-

resort in order to change the situation. Gallipoli therefore turned out to

You cannot imagine the scope of the revolution here. None of us

26. Aydemir,Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.463.

only gold. (Aydemir, Makedonya'dan, Vol.3, p.35.)

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