Titans of History

All three hailed from the Macedonian provinces and therefore felt the need to prove themselves true Turks and compensate for their parochial origins. Ismail Enver was the war minister and the leader of the regime, a nationalistic military officer who regarded himself as the Ottoman Napoleon: young and brave, he was also vain, deluded and reckless. He made his name fighting Italy in Libya, and Bulgaria in the Balkans, but as a general he was inept and amateurish. Nonetheless by the age of at thirty-one he had seized power, married in to the Ottoman royal family, moved into a palace and received the title of vice-generalissimo. His colleague Ahmet Jemal, was the most flamboyant of the three: a tiny, energetic showman, bon viveur and army officer, capable of the dirty work in Istanbul, organizing killings of opponents. Yet he was also intelligent, flexible and charming, with an array of beautiful Jewish mistresses and friendships with foreigners. He became navy minister and effective viceroy of the Arab provinces of the empire. The third pasha was Talat, a civil servant in the post office until he was sacked for his membership of the Young Turks—officially the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—and became the interior minister of the regime.

The three men had all joined the Young Turks, espousing its early and liberal ideas. They fought to achieve the revolution of 1908, and the restoration of Parliament

After the assassination of Prime Minister Mahmud Sevket Pasha in July 1913, and then the shooting (by Enver himself) of the war minister Talat, Enver and Jemal became the “Three Pashas,” the junta of triumvirs who led the empire into World War One after Enver had personally shot the war minister. Their early liberal ideas soon proved illusionary as they embraced a militant and racist Turkish nationalism, increasingly inspired by the belief that only war and violence could restore the vigor of the Ottomans. The most notable example of this was their treatment of the Empire’s Armenian minority.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the predominantly Christian Armenians had still been referred to as the Millet-i Sadika—the loyal community. However, Russian expansion into the Caucasus helped stimulate Armenian nationalism. The Ottoman empire contained far fewer Christians after the 1878 Congress of Berlin, exposing the Armenians to Muslim resentment as outsiders and traitors; ordinary Turks envied Armenian mercantile wealth. Many Turks came to see the rise of Armenian nationalism as a threat to the very existence of the Ottoman state.

Already, in the final years of the 19th century, Sultan Abdul Hamid II and others had acquiesced in a series of pogroms against Armenians: possibly hundreds of thousands died in 1895–6, while the Adana massacre of 1909 cost an estimated 30,000 lives.

In 1914/15, Enver took command of the offensive against Russia in the Caucasus. The endeavor was to end in total failure. However, Russia armed Armenian insurgents. When Russian/Armenian forces took Van in mid-May 1915, setting up an Armenian mini-state, the Three Pashas immediately laid the blame at the door of the supposedly disloyal Armenians. Talat prepared the state’s revenge.

On April 24, 1915, the security forces rounded up over 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul, deported them to the east and then murdered them. After the initial deportations in April, the program was soon extended to the entire Armenian community. Men, women and children were sent on forced marches—without food or water—to the provinces of Syria and Mesopotamia. On May 27, the Three Pashas passed the Deportation Law, confirmed by act of Parliament. The Special Organization, a paramilitary security force, was allegedly set up under Enver and Talat to carry out deportations and massacres.

During the deportations, men were routinely separated from the rest of the population and executed. Women and children were obliged to march on, and subjected to intermittent beatings and massacres. Those who survived the journey were herded into concentration camps. Conditions there were appalling. Many prisoners were tortured, made the subject of gruesome medical experiments or slaughtered. Many more died from hunger and thirst. Some of the worst excesses in the camps were recorded by the American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, who reported how the guards would “apply red-hot irons to his [an Armenian’s] breast, tear off his flesh with red-hot pincers, and then pour boiled butter into the wounds. In some cases the gendarmes would nail hands and feet to pieces of wood—evidently in imitation of the Crucifixion, and then, while the sufferer writhed in agony, they would cry: ‘Now let your Christ come help you!’”