After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Cemal, together with Enver and Talat, fled to Germany. Under pressure from the British government, the postwar Ottoman government tried Cemal in absentia, found him guilty of war crimes, and condemned him to death. Cemal’s stay in Germany was short. He first went to Switzerland and then to Russia, where he met the leaders of the Soviet government. While in Russia he established contact with the Turkish nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). From Russia he traveled to Afghanistan. In 1922, while visiting Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Cemal was assassinated by an Armenian. His remains were brought back to Turkey and buried in Erzurum.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Enver Pasha; Talat Pasha; Rebels: Young Turks
Further Reading
Ahmad, Feroz. The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Bogosian, Eric. Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide. New York: Little, Brown, 2015.
Djemal Pasha. Memories of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–1919. New York: Arno Press, 1973.
Hanioglu, M. Șükrü. Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Hanioglu, M. Șükrü. The Young Turks in Opposition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Hanioglu, Șükrü. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Kansu, Aykut. The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Mango, Andrew. Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. New York: Overlook Press, 1999.
Mehmed Talat Pașha. Posthumous Memoirs. Leeaf.com Books, Amazon Digital Services, 2013.
Ramsaur, Ernest. The Young Turks: Prelude to the Revolution of 1908. New York: Russell & Russell, 1957.
Rogan, Eugene. The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Zürcher, Erik J. The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
Enver Pasha (1881–1922)
Ismail Enver, also known as Enver Pasha, was an Ottoman army officer, commander, and politician and one of the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which carried out the 1908 coup d’état against the autocratic rule of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). After the coup of 1913 he was appointed minister of war and emerged with Cemal (Jemal) Pasha and Talat Pasha as a member of the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. He was responsible for negotiating a secret treaty with Germany, which obligated the Ottoman Empire to enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, namely Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Enver was born in Istanbul in 1881. He attended military preparatory school in Manastir (present-day Bitola in southwestern Macedonia). He then enrolled in the Staff College, from which he graduated in 1902. Enver was assigned to the 3rd Army, based in Salonika (Thessaloniki). It was in Salonika in present-day northern Greece that he joined the CUP. In 1908 Enver played an important role in carrying out the coup against the autocratic rule of Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909), gaining the title “champion of freedom.” After the victory of the Young Turk revolution, he was appointed military attaché in Berlin. He returned to the Ottoman Empire in time to play an important role in suppressing the mutiny of March 1909.
Enver Pasha, who served as the Ottoman minister of war from 1914 to 1918, was also a member of the triumvirate that dominated the Ottoman government during World War I. (Library of Congress)
In 1911 Enver went to Libya to organize resistance against the Italian forces, which had invaded and occupied several important urban centers in the northern part of the Ottoman province. In 1912 he was appointed governor of Benghazi in present-day northeastern Libya. By 1913 Enver was back in Istanbul, where he played a central role in the January coup d’état that imposed the authority of the CUP over the Ottoman Empire. Enver was appointed chief of the general staff of the Ottoman Empire. On July 22, 1913, Ottoman forces under the command of Enver Pasha recaptured Edirne, which had been seized by Bulgaria in the First Balkan War. The victory over the Bulgarians elevated Enver to the status of a national hero. He married the niece of the reigning Ottoman monarch, Sultan Mehmed V (r. 1909–1918). After 1913, together with Cemal (Jemal) Pasha and Talat Pasha, he emerged as a member of the so-called triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire.
In January 1914 Enver was appointed minister of war. He signed a secret treaty with Germany, which positioned the Ottoman Empire to enter World War I as an ally of the German kaiser. The Ottoman Empire entered the war in November 1914. In December 1914 the Ottoman army suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Russian forces at Sarikamiș (Sarikamish) in the present-day Kars province of eastern Turkey. This defeat undermined the credibility of Enver, but he regained his prestige when the Ottoman forces supported by German officers forced the withdrawal of the British and French forces from Gallipoli in December 1915/January 1916. In 1915, along with Talat Pasha, Enver Pasha emerged as one of the principal organizers of the Armenian genocide, which resulted in the eviction of over one million Armenians from eastern Anatolia.
In early October 1918 Enver was dismissed from his position as minister of war. On October 30, 1918, the Ottoman government capitulated and signed the Armistice of Mudros. Two days later Enver Pasha, together with Cemal Pasha and Talat Pasha, fled to Germany. The postwar Ottoman government tried Enver in absentia and condemned him to death. While in Germany Enver met the Bolshevik leader, Karl Radek. Following this meeting, Enver traveled to Moscow. During his negotiations with Soviet authorities, Enver discussed the possibility of attacking Mustafa Kemal’s nationalist army in Anatolia with support from the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks did not, however, trust Enver, and they refused to offer him any assistance. He asked for permission to return to Anatolia, but Mustafa Kemal rejected his request. In early September 1920 Enver traveled to Baku in the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan to participate in the Congress of the Peoples of the East, organized by the Communist International and the Soviet Communist Party. In 1921 Soviet authorities allowed Enver to travel to Central Asia. Enver’s stated objective in traveling there was to assist the Red Army’s war efforts against Muslim rebels known as the Basmachi. Once he had arrived in Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan, however, Enver joined the anticommunist rebels instead. Dreaming of creating a Pan-Turkic empire, Enver converted the desperately disorganized and fragmented Basmachi forces into a formidable army. He also called for a jihad or an Islamic holy war against the godless communists. By the winter of 1922 a considerable territory in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, including the cities of Samarqand and Dushanbe, had fallen under Basmachi control. The Soviet regime changed its tactics, and the Red Army struck back in the summer of 1922, defeating the Basmachi forces. Enver died fighting the Red Army near Baldzhuan in present-day Tajikistan on August 4, 1922. His body was buried near Ab-e Darya in present-day Tajikistan. In 1997 his remains were transported to Turkey and reburied at the Monument of Liberty (Abide-i Hürriyet or Hürriyet Aniti) in Șișil (Shishil), Istanbul, a memorial built in honor of the soldiers and officers killed defending the Ottoman parliament against monarchist forces during the 1909 countercoup.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Cemal Pasha; Rebels: Young Turks
Further Reading
Ahmad, Feroz. The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
Bogosian, Eric. Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot That Avenged the Armenian Genocide. New York: Little, Brown, 2015.
Djemal Pasha. Memories of a Turkish Statesman, 1913–1919. New York: Arno Press, 1973.
&nbs
p; Hanioglu, M. Șükrü. Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Hanioglu, M. Șükrü. The Young Turks in Opposition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Hanioglu, Șükrü. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Kansu, Aykut. The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
Mango, Andrew. Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. New York: Overlook Press, 1999.
Mehmed Talat Pasha. Posthumous Memoirs. Leeaf.com Books, Amazon Digital Services, 2013.
Ramsaur, Ernest. The Young Turks: Prelude to the Revolution of 1908. New York: Russell & Russell, 1957.
Rogan, Eugene. The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East. New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Fuad Pasha Keçecizade Mehmed (Kechejizade
Mehmed) (1815–1869)
Ottoman statesman and reformer, as well as one of the chief architects of the reform measures known as Tanzimat (Reorganization), who served twice as the grand vizier and five times as the foreign minister of the Ottoman Empire during the reign of the Ottoman sultan, Abdülmecid (Abdülmejid) (r. 1839–1861). The Tanzimat reforms were introduced to modernize the Ottoman state and prevent the further territorial disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.
Fuad Pasha was born in 1815 in Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. His mother was Hibetullah Hanim. His father, Izzet Molla, was a celebrated poet. He received a traditional medrese education. At the age of 14 he was forced to leave school because his father was exiled to Sivas in central Anatolia. In the absence of his father, Mehmed Fuad enrolled in the medical school, where he also learned French. After completing his education, Mehmed Fuad joined the Ottoman army as a physician. In 1837 he returned to Istanbul, and with encouragement from the reform-minded Ottoman statesman Mustafa Reşid (Reshid) Pasha, he joined government service. Mehmed Fuad’s knowledge of the French language allowed him to join the Translation Office (Tercüme Odasi). The era of Tanzimat, which began in 1839, was dominated by government officials who had received their education and training at the Translation Office followed by diplomatic service at Ottoman embassies in European capitals. In 1839 Fuad was appointed the chief interpreter at the Sublime Porte. In 1840 Fuad was appointed first secretary of the Ottoman Embassy in London. He went on to serve in several diplomatic posts, visiting European countries, including Spain and Portugal. In 1848, following the eruption of revolutions in Europe and the subsequent arrival of thousands of Polish and Hungarian refugees in Ottoman territory, Fuad Pasha played a central role in negotiating an amicable resolution of the refugee crisis with the Russian government (Bölükbaşi: 225). Upon returning to Istanbul, Fuad Pasha received the Order of Privilege (Nişan-i Imtiyaz) and was appointed “undersecretary of the grand vizier” (Bölükbaşi: 225). In 1850 he was sent on a special mission to Egypt. In 1852, when his friend and fellow Tanzimat reformer Āli Pasha was appointed grand vizier, Fuad Pasha assumed the post of foreign minister. He would serve as foreign minister four more times.
Fuad Pasha was one of the leaders of the Ottoman reform movement known as Tanzimat (reorganization). (Wright, John Henry. A History of All Nations from the Earliest Times, 1906)
A committed Europeanizer, Fuad Pasha served on the Commission of Education, which recommended a complete reform of the Ottoman Empire’s educational system. In 1857 Fuad Pasha was appointed president of the Tanzimat Council. In 1861, when Abdülaziz ascended the throne as the new sultan, Fuad Pasha was appointed grand vizier and foreign minister. In 1862, however, Fuad Pasha was dismissed, only to be reinstated as prime minister in 1863. He remained grand vizier until 1867. Following the advice of his physician, who had diagnosed him with a heart ailment, Fuad Pasha traveled to Nice, on the southeast coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea. While staying in Nice he died suddenly, on February 12, 1869.
Aside from being a capable statesman and diplomat, Fuad Pasha was also an outstanding scholar. He was a member of the Ottoman Academy of Sciences (Bölükbaşi: 225). In 1851 he collaborated with another statesman of the Tanzimat period, the historian and linguist Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (Ahmed Jevdet Pasha), in writing Kavaid-i Osmaniye (The Rules of Ottoman Turkish), a landmark work in the reform of the Ottoman Turkish language.
See also: Beys and Pashas: Āli Pasha, Mehmed Emin; Mustafa Reşid Pasha; Sultans: Abdülmecid
Further Reading
Bölükbaşi, Ö. Faruk. “Fuad Pasha (Keçecizade Mehmed).” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 225. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Davison, Roderic H. Nineteenth Century Ottoman Diplomacy and Reforms. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1999.
Davison, Roderic H. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876. New York: Gordian Press, 1973.
Findley, Carter V. Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Hurewitz, J. C. Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record. 2 vols. Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1956.
Inalcik, Halil. Application of the Tanzimat and its Social Effects. Lisse: Peter de Ridder, 1976.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
Lord Kinross. The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. New York: William Morrow, 1977.
Mardin, Şerif. The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963.
Quataert, Donald. The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Shaw, Stanford J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Yurdakul, Ilhami. “Āli Pasha, Mehmed Emin.” In Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Masters, 36–37. New York: Facts On File, 2009.
Zürcher, Erik-Jan. Turkey: A Modern History. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Gāzi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha (1839–1919)
One of the Ottoman Empire’s most distinguished military commanders of the second half of the 19th century. He was born in 1839 into a Turkish family in the city of Bursa in western Anatolia. He attended the Ottoman Military College in Istanbul. In 1856 he served in the Crimean War. In 1862 he served as a staff officer during the war in Montenegro. Between 1870 and 1873 he served in Yemen, where he re-established Ottoman rule and pacified not only Yemen, but also the Asir region of Arabia (present-day southwestern Saudi Arabia). Upon returning from the victorious campaign in Yemen, Ahmed Muhtar received the title of pasha. He also held several high governmental posts. In 1873 he was appointed commander of the Ottoman army’s Second Army Corps. In 1875, when a revolt broke out against the Ottoman government in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ahmed Muhtar Pasha was placed at the head of Ottoman forces there. In 1877, when a new war erupted with Russia, Ahmed Muhtar Pasha was sent to eastern Anatolia to assume command of the Ottoman forces in Erzurum. In a fierce and bloody campaign against the Russians, the Ottoman army scored several impressive victories. Though the Ottomans were eventually defeated, Ahmed Muhtar Pasha’s exceptional leadership and bravery earned him the title of gāzi (holy warrior). After the end of the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877–1878 “he was appointed chief of the general staff” (Somel: 95). In 1885 Ahmed Muhtar Pasha was sent to Egypt by Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909) as the Ottoman High Commissioner of the country.
In July 1912 Gāzi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha was appointed grand vizier of the Ottom
an Empire. His cabinet did not include any members of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which dominated the Chamber of Deputies, the Ottoman Empire’s popularly elected lower house. Because the CUP had been accused of having won the election of 1912 through electoral fraud, Gāzi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha dissolved the Chamber on August 5, 1912, with the support and approval of Sultan Mehmed V (r. 1909–1918). A major war was looming in the Balkans, and the Ottoman Empire was the principal target of those who were organizing it. In March 1912 Serbia and Bulgaria formed an alliance followed by an agreement between Bulgaria and Greece in May. In October 1912 Serbia and Montenegro also formed an alliance. On October 8 the Balkan allies declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The Bulgarians quickly defeated the Ottomans at the battles of Kirklareli/Kirkkilise (October 22–24) and Lüleburgaz (October 22–November 2), followed by a Serbian victory at the battle of Kumanovo (October 23–24). Caught off guard, Gāzi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha tried to contain the crisis by declaring martial law, but this response proved to be too little, too late. With Ottoman defenses collapsing and the remaining Balkan provinces of the empire in disarray, Gāzi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha resigned on October 29, 1912. Nearly six and a half years later, in January 1919, Gāzi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha died in Istanbul at the age of 79.
See also: Battles and Treaties: Congress of Berlin; Beys and Pashas: Gāzi Osman Pasha; Sultans: Abdülhamid II
Further Reading
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Glenny, Misha. The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers 1804–2011. London: Penguin Books, 2012.
Jelavich, Barbara. History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Jelavich, Charles, and Barbara Jelavich. The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
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