Enver Pasha

Who was Enver Pasha?

Enver Pasha or Ismail Enver Pasha was an Ottoman military officer and a leader of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, and is seen as one of the principal orchestrators of the Armenian Genocide and the Assyrian Genocide. He was the main leader of the Ottoman Empire in both Balkan Wars and World War I. Through his career he was known by increasingly elevated titles as he rose through the ranks, including Enver Efendi, Enver Bey, and finally Enver Pasha, "Pasha" being the epithet Ottoman military officers gained after they were promoted to the rank of Mirliva.

After the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, Enver Pasha became the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire, forming one-third of the military triumvirate known as the "Three Pashas" that held de facto rule over the Empire from 1913 until the end of the War in 1918. As war minister and de facto Commander-in-Chief, Enver Pasha was considered to be the most powerful figure of the government of the Ottoman Empire—"the number one man in Istanbul", as many referred to him. At home he was hailed as "the hero of the revolution", Germans were speaking of Turkey as "Enverland", and the British referred to him as "the one whose power was absolute and ambitions were grandiose".