Enver Pasha

Ismail Enver, known to Europeans during his political career as Enver Pasha (Istanbul, November 22, 1881 - August 4, 1922) was a military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire. He was a vocal supporter of eliminating the non-Turkish population of the rump Ottoman Empire.

In April 1912 the Young Turks (officially the C.U.P.) won an overwhelming majority in an election, but loss of the province of Libya to Italy and other setbacks eroded its support to the point that in July the C.U.P. was forced to yield to a political coalition called the Liberal Union, which formed a ministry. In a coup on January 23, 1913, the C.U.P. overthrew the Liberal Union coalition and introduced a military dictatorship headed by the "Three Pashas" - Cemal, Enver and Talât. Enver's portfolio was Minister of War. With the opening of hostilities in World War I the Ottomans suffered a disastrous defeat almost immediately, when the Third Army was decimated in eastern Anatolia in December 1914, during an abortive offensive led by Enver against Russia. On suspicions that Russian sympathisers within the Armenian community were planning a revolt, he ordered that Armenian recruits in the Ottoman forces be disarmed, demobilized and assigned to labor camps, where they were summarily executed. Turkish sources claim, however, that the demobilized Armenian soldiers were returned to Armenia.

Enver was not directly in charge of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, but according to Armenian resources, on May 19, 1916, Enver declared, "The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation." He further stated, "I am entirely willing to accept the responsibility myself for everything that has taken place."

At the end of the war Talât resigned days before the empire capitulated and signs an armistice on October 30. The C.U.P. Cabinet resigned en masse in the next two days, and the "Three Pashas" fled into exile. A post-war tribunal in Istanbul tried him in absentia and condemned him to death.

Enver was ironically killed in action against an Armenian batallion of the Red Army on August 4, 1922, near Baldzhuan in Turkestan (present-day Tajikistan).

Talat Pasha

The conditions were such that Turks and Kurds around Armenian villages were armed; each day the government armed them more, but Armenians didn't have the right to keep weapons in order to defend themselves against aggressive Kurds and Turks. None of the Armenians, both man and woman, old and young, in fields, in streets, in houses or even in churches, had security of life.

There were no trials or punishments if Turks or Kurds encroached on the life, property and chastity of Armenians. When an Armenian complained to the court that such and such Turk or Muslim had raped his daughter, the first reaction of the court was to arrest the Armenian himself and send him to prison.

The courtiers uniformed the plundering Kurds to establish them as officials and made them gendarmes of Armenians, in order to encourage the Kurds to kill, plunder and encroach on Armenians.

These groups, which were established by the order of Sultan Abdul Hamid, were called "troops of Hamid" (Afvajeh Hamidiyeh) and they were rare and incomparable in their cruelty and crimes.                                                     The obvious result of this measure was that the Kurds were armed to the extreme, their felonies and crimes were made legal, Armenian lands were taken over and finally, the Armenian population in the region was decreased. Attacking Hamidian troops or defending oneself against them, was counted as revolt and resistance against the government, and was followed by heavy punishments for Armenians.
 

It was the year 1894. Mass murders had not started yet, but some scattered and successive massacres of Armenians, made life frightening and every day was passed in fear of armed robbery, rape, and slaughters. The European governments notified the Sultan several times, but they were in reality just paying lip service; the Sultan deceitfully promised reforms every time. Reforms had been promised for 40 years but they never came.
 

At last in 1894, the limited and scattered massacres turned into mass murders that spread all over the empire. Suddenly the number of murdered reached a rare level, and the massacring of Armenians generalized and spread contagiously from place to place. First the matter started because the Armenians of the mountainous region of Sasoun, located in Bitlis province, stood up against criminal encroachments of Kurds.

At the same time, the Turkish army joined in the attacks on Armenians, first burning some Armenian villages and then murdering thousands, cooperating with Kurds. The European powers with, England at the head, intervened in order to stop the massacres and the Sultan promised some reforms to European governments by the particular trickery which he had. But the slaughters not only weren't stopped but also gained more intensity and speed.
 

In the slaughters of Armenians during the years 1894-1896, which harvested the Armenian inhabitants one after another, in Western Armenia and Anatolia (eastern parts of Turkey), Trabzon, Erzinchan, Bitlis, Van, Marash, Urfa, Bayburt, Sasoun, Mush, Diyarbakir, Erzrum, Cilicia (Adana), Angora (Ankara) ... , over 300,000 Armenians were butchered disastrously.

For an example of their crimes, take the 28th of December 1895 in Urfa. Over 2500 Armenian men, women and children, fearing for their lives, had sought refuge in the altar of a church; undeterred Ottoman gendarmes set the church afire and its inhabitants were burnt alive.
 

On the 26th of August 1896, some of the Armenian youth, in order to draw the attention of the public figures of Europe to the events which were happening in the empire, took over the central bank in Constantinople (Istanbul), the capital of Ottoman, and asked that the Armenian massacres be stopped and that the promised reforms be carried out. But three days after the end of the venture, the violence of Ottoman Turks exploded and tens of thousands of Armenians were butchered and cut to pieces in the streets of Constantinople. These were vengeances which had been designed beforehand and led by Sultan Abdul Hamid himself.
 

After these massacres, no other mass murders occurred until 1908; in this year suddenly mass murder and plundering of Armenians was committed, this time in Constantinople, in front of the very eyes of foreign delegations, diplomats and big powers of Europe. This massacre gained a strong reaction in Europe and injured the credit and respectability of the Sultan seriously; he was given titles such as, The Red Sultan, The Red Animal, The Monster of ildiz,... . All the polticians and intellectuals of Europe, both left and right, liberal and conservative, condemned the massacres of Armenians in Turkey severely.
 

At last, in the same year, 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid was faced with a coup d'etat by Turkish revolutionists, who were called Young Turks. the result was that his sultanate took on a ceremonial aspect and the next year, 1909, he was deposed by the Young Turks completely.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

 

 

 

 

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