Enver Pasha

İsmâil Enver Pasha (Ottoman Turkish: اسماعیل انور پاشا; Turkish: İsmail Enver Paşa; 23 November 1881 – 4 August 1922) was a Turkish military officer, revolutionary, and convicted war criminal who served as the Ottoman Empire's Minister of War from 1914 to 1918. Along with Talaat and Djemal, he was one of the Three Pashas that ruled the Ottoman Empire during World War I and one of the principal perpetrators of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides.

While stationed in Ottoman Macedonia, Enver joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization affiliated with the Young Turks movement that was agitating against Sultan Abdul Hamid II's despotic rule. He was a key leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which reestablished the Constitution and parliamentary democracy in the Ottoman Empire. Along with Ahmed Niyazi, Enver was hailed as "hero of the revolution". However, a series of crises in the empire, including the 31 March Incident, the Balkan Wars, and the power struggle with the Freedom and Accord Party, left Enver and the Unionists disillusioned with liberal Ottomanism. After the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état brought the CUP directly to power, Enver became War Minister, while Talaat assumed control over the civilian government.

As war minister and de facto Commander-in-Chief, Enver was one of the most powerful figures in the Ottoman government. He initiated the formation of an alliance with Germany, and was instrumental in the Ottoman entry into World War I. Enver led a disastrous attack on Russian forces in the Battle of Sarikamish, after which he blamed Armenians for his defeat. Following defeat in World War I, Enver, along with other leading Unionists, escaped the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Military Tribunal convicted him and other Unionists and sentenced them to death in absentia for bringing the empire into World War I and organizing massacres against Greeks and Armenians. Enver sought to return during the Turkish War of Independence, but Mustafa Kemal refused to allow him to join the Turkish National Movement. He attempted to realise his pan-Turkic ideals by leading the Basmachi Revolt against the Bolsheviks in Bukhara, where he was killed in 1922.