Ahmet Özcan
“Enver Pasha: The Great Dream”*
“…A very troubled atmosphere. A strange fog. The enemy is not visible. No movement from the enemy either (…) I am closing my letter by writing my last lines. Along with the wildflowers I send you from here every day, I’m also sending a small branch I broke off the elm tree I’ve been sleeping under for several nights. I entrust you and our children to Oneness of God, my dear soul… I carved your name on the elm tree with my knife.”
(From a letter Enver Pasha wrote to his wife Naciye Sultan from Pamir.)
Dear Enver Bey,
It was the mid-1970s, and I was in the fifth grade at primary school. We had a very kind and well-meaning teacher named Hasan. He was always sad and often came to school in the mornings as if hungover from the night before. Thanks to him, our classes were always filled with fun. Teacher Hasan, as I later learned from the picture of ‘Ecevit’ on his keychain, which he always carried, was a CHP leftist. We loved him very much. He loved us, too. Sometimes, he talked about Atatürk. Pointing to the picture of Atatürk hanging above the blackboard, he said, “Children, don’t forget that we’re sitting in these seats thanks to him.” One day, he spoke at length about Atatürk again. How he saved the country, his heroism, intelligence, statesmanship… I’ll never forget it, his expression growing increasingly stern, he said, “Actually, we were once a great country, children. We had even greater heroes. There was Enver, for example, Enver Pasha.” I still remember that strange look in his eyes, was it anger? Sorrow? “You will understand Enver when you grow up,” he said. “If I tell you now, you won’t understand, but you’ll get it when you’re older.” At the time, I didn’t quite grasp what teacher Hasan meant. Who was Enver? Why would I understand him only when I grew up? Was he a good man or a bad one? Teacher Hasan never mentioned Enver again. But the spark of curiosity he ignited inside us always lingered.
Then we grew up, and as we did, Türkiye shrank. We learned that, as a country, we had been dramatically but magnificently defeated long ago. Those who accepted the defeat and took pride in what remained drew a line over the past. Those who could not accept the defeat wanted to revive it, reunite with it, or link the present to the past. We found ourselves in the middle of this unproductive conflict, carried out through differing appearances and tools. The one shared point of agreement among all sides in this battle rooted in the trauma of defeat was hostility toward Enver and the Committee of Union and Progress.
It was interesting that almost every group, those identifying themselves as Kemalist, nationalist, liberal, leftist, or Islamist, displayed the same reflex when the conversation turned to the period between 1908 and 1918, ‘the moment’ of collapse. Later, we would learn that this hostility was also the product of finely crafted British-Russian propaganda, even psychological warfare lies tailored specifically for each faction. The British never forgot their true enemy.
The British-Russian lies were as follows: “Enver Pasha and the Unionists caused the fall of the mighty Empire. They served Germany’s imperialist goals, took control of the state through violence, coups, and conspiracies, and dragged the country into World War I in a fait accompli. They were ignorant and inexperienced. Most were masons and were being used behind the scenes by Sabbatean-Jewish converts. They politicized the army and initiated the tradition of coups with the 1913 raid on the Sublime Porte. Enver Pasha led the army into an unnecessary campaign at Sarıkamış, resulting in the death of 90,000 of our soldiers. He was adventurous, dreamy, and had dictatorial ambitions. In the end, when the war was over, they all fled to Germany, leaving the country in ruins, etc.”
This consensus vividly demonstrated a mindset that doesn’t analyze or consider the economic-political dimensions, philosophy, geopolitics, psychology, or sociology of losing a great empire, but instead attributes every evil to the certain individuals, groups, internal and external forces, or, in other words, to the fate. With such a strong consensus, all that was left for us was to repeat the same narratives.
Enver Bey,
If Türkiye had not shrunk while we grew up, if we had not learned that almost all of the country’s intellectuals, bureaucrats, businessmen, scholars and politicians, organizations and communities, elders and masters, chiefs and leaders of the last fifty years, especially the state elite, were merely small personalities and entities that we overestimated, if we had not developed the conviction that all the conflicts and struggles we experienced were essentially the trauma of defeat and the false manifestations of the desire for upward mobility, we would not have attempted to question these memorizations about you. However, we live in a land of collective lies, and everyone has agreed to perpetuate an inauthentic sociality through assigned roles and motivated missions. What I’m saying is that this tacit alliance regarding Unionist hostility resembles criminal material that could expose many things.
Enver Bey,
First I must summarize your story:
In Şevket Süreyya’s words, your adventure began as a star and as the ‘Hero of Freedom’ in the mountains of Macedonia in 1908 as “a different kind of person from a different kind of country, a different kind of generation”, ended with a valiant fight against the Russians on the Çegan Hill in the foothills of the Pamir Mountains in Turkestan on August 4, 1922. The emergence of a new political willpower outside of the six-hundred-year-old absolute authority of the “State,” in the form of the Young Ottoman–Young Turk–Union and Progress movement, began to transform into a meaningful instrument of power when you and your friends assumed leadership at the 1906 congress. The transformation of the Ottoman Progress and Union Society, which was an intellectual opposition that was being exploited by the rivalry between the pashas within the palace and the consulates of Western countries, into a political party far more influential than its size was possible thanks to you as a soldier and Talat Pasha as a civilian. The victory of the military-civilian intellectual alliance against the despotic rule of Abdülhamid in 1908, demanding liberty, constitution, and parliament, was perhaps an even more significant transformation marked the beginning of the state being reclaimed by the nation.
What was at stake was the reopening of the state apparatus to the people, which had closed itself off to ‘Anatolia’ and other ‘peripheries’ and surrendered to ‘devshirme’ elites due to the Timur invasion and Shah Ismail incidents. The real driver of this process was the deepening collapse, which awakened latent dynamics and reflexes. The scattered and resentful common sense within the state and the nation, sensing the approaching collapse, seized and reshaped the most organized and dynamic movement on the stage. The Union and Progress movement, with its multifaceted and multivector structure, is the name of this willpower. The elite transformation, which occurred in the West through bloody class and sectarian wars, was achieved in our case with much less cost through the Young Turks movement. If our inevitable end, as we still acknowledge today it was inevitable, is not like Andalusia’s fate, we can say we owe it to Abdulhamid II, who resorted to despotism out of exaggerated delusions, and to the Committee of Union and Progress, which grew and matured in a kind of premeditated conflict with him. Of course, we must not forget their shortcomings and mistakes.
For example, today we know that the beginning of the collapse was the agreement between Britain and Russia to partition the Ottoman Empire. Considering that modern diplomacy was shaped around the relations between England-Russia and Germany-France, if one of these relations turned into war, Europe would be torn apart or brought about a disaster, and if one of these relations turned into peace, a third country would be torn apart or brought about a disaster. This is the entire summary of the last two hundred years of wars known as imperialist conflicts. Throughout this period, the Ottoman Empire was exhausted by trying to stay out of trouble through balancing acts. Neither the political economy of ‘sharing’ in general and the historical meaning of modernization, nor the political value of oil, which was discovered to be of use for industry and war in the early 1900s and was largely found in Ottoman lands, found a response in the Ottoman state mind. The state, which concentrated all power in the Palace and isolated itself from both its people and the world, confined itself in a tautological trap, to the extent that it even limited the nature of objections raised by young intellectuals who had learned to read and write and were in contact with the West. So much so that, except for Mithat Pasha with his unique and enlightened personality, the political imagination of all New Ottoman–Young Turk–Unionist cadres from Namık Kemal to Ahmet Rıza, from Talat Pasha to Enver Pasha, consisted of an eclectic idealism influenced partly by French positivist nationalism and partly by Balkan revolutionary groups.
The unity, security, strengthening, and renewal of the state and the homeland were common goals. But it was believed that this would magically materialize with the promulgation of the Constitution, the contents of which almost none of them had any detailed knowledge of. In a context where the “State” was effectively at the mercy of the great Western powers, the inexperienced yet idealistic, harsh but rational intervention of the Committee of Union and Progress was inevitable. As the last representative of the state mind, Abdulhamid II’s main policy towards the Great Powers, that is, balancing Germany and the others, was also the inevitable line of the Committee of Union and Progress. In this sense, those who deposed Abdulhamid merely took his place and organized a magnificent resistance to prevent the inevitable end from becoming total annihilation. Because the non-military reasons for being late in the history had collapsed upon and paralyzed a military agricultural empire. Under such conditions, the most meaningful action that could be taken was what had been done during the era that began with Abdulhamid II and ended with Mustafa Kemal; to make the collapse very costly for the enemy and to hold onto whatever could be preserved until the end. Abdulhamid II and Enver imposed a high price, and thanks to that, Mustafa Kemal opened a new chapter with what remained.
Under all these objective circumstances, finding out the ‘sins’ of Enver and the Unionist leadership and putting the blame on them for everything that has happened is not only disloyalty, but also the stifling of a willpower that is necessary today. It is disloyalty, because dedication, sacrifice, courage, dignity and and fighting spirit are condemned in the person of a generation that has spent its entire lives trying to prevent collapse and has received ‘nothing’ in return, neither materially nor spiritually…
Enver Bey,
İsmet İnönü says about you in his memoirs: “Enver Pasha, with his personal merits, is a good soldier, a good officer, a good man, and he is a type who is incapable of being affected by the elements that society perceives as flaws, to an extent that one cannot even imagine. In terms of military capabilities, he was a duty-bound, hardworking, and exceptionally brave hero, possessing the highest standards the military could ever demand.”
Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, in his three-volume biography detailing your dizzying life story, speaks admiringly, apart from the scattered remarks about your Germanophilia, idealism, adventurousness, and desire to be a sole ruler. Guerrilla wars in the Balkans, taking to the mountains for liberty, your post in Berlin as military attaché, returning during the 31 March Incident to serve as Chief of Staff for the Action Army, quelling the rebellion by fighting in the front lines; upon the 1911 invasion of Tripoli, secretly traveling to North Africa by recruiting volunteers; when Edirne was occupied in 1913, leading the raid on the Sublime Porte to topple the pro-British Grand Vizier Kamil Pasha’s “leave and be safe” policy, establishing the Unionist government and retaking Edirne; fighting in the front lines at Sarıkamış and Çanakkale during World War I, after the 1918 Armistice of Mudros, your attempt to abandon your companions en route to Berlin via a German submarine, heading instead for the Caucasus, surviving three major accidents, two in aircraft and one at sea, before eventually returning to Berlin. Contact with Bolshevik officials in Berlin including Lenin and Trotsky, and prepared joint plans, projects, and actions aimed at continuing resistance against Britain across Anatolia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, the Caucasus, and Central Asia… Participation in the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku. After the Bolsheviks reached an agreement with Britain in 1921, moving to Turkestan to organize the Basmachi Revolt against the Russians. When the most powerful tribal leader in Turkestan made peace with the Russians, your resistance weakened. On the second day of Eid al-Adha, you died in an ambush, rushing at the enemy in the front line, achieving a kind of martyrdom resembling suicide.
Marriage of ‘convenience’ with the daughter from palace, Naciye Sultan, was orchestrated by the Committee of Union and Progress leadership to gain influence within the palace. A passionate love affair began with Naciye Sultan after the marriage. A deathless devotion and loyalty to both the cause and his beloved. The average ‘Ottoman’ character; a conservative worldview, Islamic ethics, a believer’s reliance on God, and, military bravery, organizational skill, courage, and initiative even recognized by your enemies. Islamism, aimed at the uprising of Muslim societies against imperialism based on unwavering loyalty to the Caliphate, Ottomanism and Islam. The Turkestan perspective, which is not Turanist or Turkist, that is, does not include an imaginary unity based on race, but aims for the independence of all Muslim Turkish communities. A great horizon, a vast vision, an endless, boundless map…
Enver Bey,
The most frequent accusation against you was Germanophilia. Even your attempt to extract the most advantage from the German alliance, imposed by desperation and necessity, was interpreted within the Cold War framework as ‘servitude’ or ‘being used.’ But Enver’s German inclination cannot be compared to today’s pro-Americanism or pro-Europeanism. Enver was first and foremost an Ottomanist. At the time, Germany was the strongest power, the only one unwilling to see the Ottoman Empire dismantled, and the only one willing to form an alliance. The alliance born of a shared fate with this strongest ally against those who had already decided to partition the Empire bears no resemblance whatsoever to the so-called alliances of today, which, under the guise of manufactured foreign threats, render Türkiye wholly dependent on foreign powers. Moreover, Germany’s hidden intentions toward the Ottoman Empire during the war were always monitored and, at times, relations came close to breaking down. For example, Germany reacted harshly to the abolition of capitulations at the beginning of the war; there were serious crises over German command in Palestine and Iraq; and armed confrontation with Germany was narrowly avoided over control of oil regions in the Caucasus
Let us hear once more from İsmet İnönü: “In his relations with the German military mission, it cannot be said that Enver Pasha was entirely subordinate to the Germans. On the contrary, the Germans were always wary of him and tried to please him. However, as his own strength declined and he came to recognize the limitations of his military capabilities and resources, he eventually became a tool of German command and control out of necessity.”
Most importantly, based on the reality of Türkiye’s dependence on the West, a habit of the Cold War, whether in the alliance with the Germans, in the Central Asian adventure, or even in relations with masons and other international organizations, always looking for one-sided conspiracies against us, claiming we are being used, and never considering the contrary, is a common trait, a product of insecurity and self-doubt. But how likely is it that cadres who, to the very end of their lives, fought with unwavering loyalty to this country, homeland, and nation, were mere tools in someone else’s hands? The unfairness reaches such extremes that those who risked their lives to save the Ottoman Empire are blamed for its collapse, as though ‘it would have been better had they simply handed everything over without bloodshed’. Again, the great determination to resist, which lies behind their efforts to use everything for their cause, from the Masonic lodges to international conflicts, from the palace to the Sublime Porte, from religious orders to taverns, and even their unprecedented success in doing so, has been constantly denigrated.
Because they are gone now, and all the objective conditions needed to sustain their cause have been systematically erased. Britain and France, the USA and Germany, Russia and Italy, all of them; they have written down every lie necessary in history to prevent a willpower that knew how to stand against all of them at the same time and defended the dignity of the East by making them pay a heavy price, from causing trouble for them again. Because the defeated cannot be considered right, strong, capable, or legitimate. History is written by the victors, and the living blame the dead. No one cares about the truth. There is now a history carved out for themselves by England, which is the winner abroad, and by those who have become dominant domestically after the liquidation of the Unionists. Today, when ‘Enver’ is mentioned, the fabricated lie “90,000 soldiers at Sarıkamış” is immediately repeated. In truth, 26,000 of our soldiers were martyred, and the real cause was not Enver or anyone else, but the brutal reality of war. At Gallipoli, because it ended in victory, we proudly speak of 250,000 martyrs. But when the cold and disease in Sarıkamış cause losses, everyone embraces lies with exaggerated figures and the air of military strategists. The irony is that since 1908, the Western press, led by London, consistently portrayed the Unionists as godless, Masonic, and controlled by Jewish converts. In reality, the Unionists did what the Anglo-Saxons do today, and used the Jewish power, which was constantly excluded in the West, and the possibilities of the Masonic organizations seeking international influence, to their fullest and completely advantage. There is not a single instance where these ‘utilizations’ led to action against the homeland and nation or served foreign interests. There are forced interpretations of those who derive symbolic meanings from this event, based on the fact that two of the four people chosen were non-Muslims and one was a convert, after the Unionist leaders did not attend the deposition of Abdulhamid II out of courtesy. But in truth, Judaism, conversion, and Masonry had not yet reached today’s power, significance, or mission, and since the Tanzimat, they had been the main mediators between Türkiye and the West. When it was necessary to look back and create a legend of bad guys, it was useful to invent famous lies and work on weak points to bait right-conservative minds with these black propaganda materials. Especially the propaganda against Enver Pasha resembles modern attacks on Islamic leaders and organizations. But Enver Pasha is not Usama bin Laden, nor Saddam Hussein. He was not a Western agent, he was the East’s last warrior. He fought with all his might against an overt imperialist war targeting his country and his dignity. On the other hand, another propaganda was carried out towards the Arab world, starting from the Turks are changing their religion and ending with the British are becoming Muslims en masse. For instance, a supposedly lost book by Ibn Arabi was said to mention a figure called the “Ennebi” who would appear at the end of times. Coincidentally, the commander of British occupation forces in Egypt was named ‘Allenby.’ Just as the Arab world was bombarded with anti-Turkish propaganda, within Türkiye similar disinformation was directed against the Unionists, always targeting the ignorant.
Another approach, and one that is more popular with intellectuals, is that Unionism is putschist, conspiratorial, despotic and Jacobin. However, there is a small detail that is neglected; neither before nor after 1908, during their periods of power, the Unionists were harsh not towards the people or those with different ideas, but towards the collaborators of the Palace and foreign states. Their Jacobin stance was not to suppress or discipline the nation, but to resist the despot who oppressed it. And the only ‘coup’ they executed, the raid on the Sublime Porte, was an action intended to avenge the Balkan War and reclaim Edirne, and even this cannot be considered a coup in the modern sense.
Ultimately, the Unionist leaders like Talat, Cemal, and Sait Halim Pasha were either assassinated by Armenian gunmen in plots organized by the British or eliminated through British-Bolshevik agreements, like Enver Pasha. During the founding of the Turkish Republic, Unionists were systematically removed one by one, both domestically and abroad. It’s as if some hidden hand forced the complete liquidation of Unionism, just as it imposed other covert conditions as prerequisites for the state’s existence and survival, culminating in the executions following the 1926 İzmir assassination case.
Another issue worth considering is how, since the 1950s, Western-origin propaganda and disinformation against the Unionists has been blindly repeated by both the left and particularly the Islamic-nationalist circles.
Forgetting Enver and the Unionists, and listing the British lies by heart when we remember them; provides a convenient measure for understanding the period, in which the Turkish right wing was fermented and coded, and the infusion given to the right wing, the mission assigned to it, and the borders drawn. Enver and the Unionists are to be cursed. Anglophile mixed parties such as Freedom and Accord and Liberty will be praised, and Unionists such as Prince Sabahattin, Sait Halim Pasha, and Mehmet Akif will be embraced by carefully separating them from their Unionism. The alliance of soldiers, civilians, and intellectuals will be abandoned to leftist Kemalism and a demagogic populism, which started with Menderes and ended in shantytown politics, will claim to represent the ‘people’s’ struggle for power.” The cause of the nation’s power, the cause of the country’s welfare and development, the cause of the state’s ownership by nation itself, the cause of the abolition of the Sultanate and the sovereignty of the Republic, the cause of a great Türkiye have been eliminated by being placed in the brackets of an anomalous right-wing movement that is irrelevant to these aims and even diametrically opposed to them. Ultimately, the point that right-wing politics has reached, which has made small tradesmen and peasants its voting base and kept them there, and then moved them to the ‘slums’ in the metropolises to make them its ‘base’ again, has become nothing but a lumpen democracy that will ‘preserve’ this system. Leftist Kemalism, on the other hand, distorted the efforts of modernization while remaining national, reconciling piety with innovation, and localizing property and politics, which began with Abdulhamid II and the Unionists and continued by Mustafa Kemal until the 1930s, and thus, transformed state and religion, army and religious people, religion and modernity, and Turkishness and Islam into conflicting, opposing cycles, and thus, it carried out its mission of laying mines between them. This means that there is a ‘wisdom’ in the fact that the leftist Kemalists, whose relations with the British are questionable, and the rightist conservatives, whose relations with the Americans are problematic, unite in their hostility towards Unionism.
Enver Bey,
We know that as our empire collapsed, we lost our most qualified cadres. Of the two and a half million soldiers we had, five hundred thousand were lost in battle, and nearly one and a half million were lost to disease, hunger, and lack of medicine. It is said that during the war, there were about three hundred thousand deserters. It is known that these three hundred thousand soldiers who escaped from the war while fighting on 10 different fronts for four years, that is, when we were about to lose everything, mostly engaged in banditry, that is, they haunted the property and honor of the abandoned villagers who sent their children to die. It is impossible not to wonder who these fugitives and their children and grandchildren were who mingled with the survivors after the war ended. Historians note that these fugitives were primarily “involved” in the Armenian relocation and settled in Armenian villages. Could it be that those seeking someone to blame for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire have a genetic predisposition to “crime”, a familiarity with being accused and covering up crimes?
Enver Bey,
The story of you and your friends is long. There is still much to learn and discuss. For now, I wanted to touch on a few matters that I’ve been curious about. I wonder about the connection between this country’s meaningless internal conflicts, its dependence on foreign powers, its wealth and lust-driven right-wing politics, its leftist enmity toward religion and nation, the dominance of small-minded people, fake personalities, ignorance, bigotry, cowardice, admiration for foreign states, idolization of power, and fake religiosity, all these so-called ‘national’ characteristics that haven’t changed a bit since Ottoman times, and our trauma of defeat and hatred toward the Unionists. Because Unionism was precisely the name of a persistent and determined struggle to break free from these traits, to renew ourselves, and to stop the collapse. Had the trauma left deeper scars than we thought, damaging our genes as well? Or had we instinctively understood that we could not truly modernize, and in response, chosen to ‘destroy’ everything? Was our fear that the Westerners would drive us out of Anatolia also manifesting as an exaggerated and manufactured dramatic desire for power and exaltation? Or have the Western powers, having learned from you, performed a similar operation on us, just as Churchill said after World War II, “It is Prussia that has caused Germany trouble. This region must be cleansed of Germany and its demographics must be changed,” to prevent similar troubles from arising again? What could be the meaning of embracing such a collective hatred and hostility, full of lies, against a generation to whom we owe so much during the most painful period of our recent history?
Enver Bey,
You engaged in politics for noble goals, fighting with your strength, your courage, standing on the righteousness of your cause, enduring hardships, sacrificing everything you had. Today, politics is conducted with the aim of gaining position, prestige, money, and power, by juggling a thousand different balances. Working with foreign powers, seeking permission from the centers of state authority, and operating under the wings of wealthy patrons have become common practices. You, whether right or wrong, believed in something and defended it to the end. You had convictions, words, and honor. While killing can never be condoned, you were ready to die without hesitation for your ideas and beliefs. Courage was your glory, and bravery your character. You had an influence that even improved the quality of your opponents.
Today, what matters is not believing in something, but ‘knowing what you want’, ‘gaining something’, ‘mastering negotiation and calculation’. The lust of passion and desire has taken our lives captive. The morality of tyrants and mobs has occupied the entire country.
In those days of poverty, despair, and impossibility, you sent people abroad, founded organizations, met with foreign embassies, plotted strategies, and incited rebellions in far-off lands to distract the enemy. When your son Ali was studying in London in the 1940s and met with Churchill through mediation of our London ambassador, Churchill reportedly told him, “Your father postponed my political career for twenty years.” Your glorious wars caused government changes in Britain, Russia, France, and Italy.
Today, our country has become a laboratory for all intelligence organizations and covert operations. The children we send to study abroad either never return due to the oppression here, or if they manage to build ‘the right connections,’ parachute back into top positions.
You responded to the British occupation of Iraq with the Canal campaign, the resistance in Palestine, the victory at Kut al-Amara, and the defense of Medina. Today, we debate how and where we should participate in America’s occupation of Iraq and what we might gain from it.
You were the children of a decayed dynasty, a dying empire, a nation plagued by ignorance and poverty. Amidst endless challenges, chaos, and imperial games, you rose and fought bravely to the end to halt the collapse.
We are the children taught by teachers like Hasan. As we grow older, we come to understand everything. We are trying to separate the fairy tales, lies, and indoctrinations of childhood. We are trying to confront the truths that will help us grow and make sense of things. For now, just like the Prophet Muhammad did in the Battle of Uhud, we are just watching those who mistake a temporary superiority for victory and rush to share the spoils, and the ongoing fight over who will act as distributors for America, England or the EU, between the “grandchildren of deserters” who like the chiefs of the Banu Umayyad have made oppression of their people.
Enver Bey,
You were Turkish. Kuşçubaşı was Circassian, Abdulkadir was Kurdish, Akif was Albanian, Sait Halim was Arab. Talat was a Mason, Cavit Bey was a convert. Before the war, you had Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, Iranian, Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, and Georgian friends, allies, and supporters. You were all Ottomans, and you were united. You were the resistance and endurance effort of the entire Ottoman world, the entire Eurasian region, the entire East. You failed.
After you, the Russians tried to carry forward your mission in a Russian-centered and socialist form. They too, after a long experiment, failed. The mission still floats unclaimed. Imperialism keeps winning, and we keep losing. Our state is under total siege, to the point of producing propaganda films with ‘coded’ narratives. Our people have given up on everything and no longer want to think, debate, or exert effort beyond their daily problems. Some of our intellectuals flatter those in power, others act as guardians of the regime, and some behave like court jesters. Our owners of capital still lack a sense of ‘bourgeois’ consciousness and distinction. Compared to their obsession with looting the state through foreign capital agency, such matters seem like idle fantasies to them. The situation is worse than we thought.
If you were alive, I know you would immediately feel compelled to act. I need to add one more thing here; those who immediately think of expansionism and adventure when Enver is mentioned forget that you built a defensive line that was not an adventure at all and only relieved Anatolia by spreading the war throughout Asia. Ironically, when needed, these same people invoke fake imperial slogans, recalling you through neo-Ottoman narratives, regional influence fantasies, and stories of Mosul and Kirkuk. But Enver, first and foremost, is the name of a noble defense and a resolute struggle for existence. Enverism is an imperial vision, but one limited by the willpower not to expand, but to avoid collapse, to resist defeat. That’s why Enver and Unionism are, above all, about internal consolidation, standing strong, holding on, and renewal. Enverism is a national and democratic restoration that, with such willpower, seeks to solve our internal problems and minimize foreign dependency. Imperial ambitions, on the other hand, can only be the natural outcome of a rational growth strategy, not driven by external forces, but as unity and alliances for defensive purposes and based on the solidarity of oppressed nations.
That is why we say that we need to meet and make peace with Unionism, that is, with its self-confidence, dignity, patriotism and courage. For this purpose, we say, let us rethink the Committee of Union and Progress as a higher front that brings together Kurds, religious people, Westerners, leftists and liberals.
This is what we mean when we say “Enver.” Enver, who found a large map, a Qur’an, an unfinished letter and a few pennies in the pocket of the martyr’s body.
Apart from the traces that can help us decipher the ‘codes’ of the nightmare we are living through, he left nothing in the name of wealth behind; proved even to his enemies what a commander, a statesman, a husband, a human being should be like, alone, yet a great man.
Teacher Hasan was right; these small minds and this small, strange country will understand you one day when grow up…
I entrust you to Oneness of God…
*Enver Pasha: From Macedonia to Central Asia, Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Remzi Publishing House, Istanbul, 1972
First Publication: Yarın Magazine – 2004
Source: Open Letters, Ahmet Özcan, Yarın Publishing, Istanbul, 2010