Enver Pasha - Armistice and Exile

Armistice and Exile

Faced with defeat, the Sultan dismissed Enver from his post as War Minister on October 4, 1918, while the rest of Talat Pasha's government resigned on October 14, 1918. On October 30, 1918, the Ottoman Empire capitulated by signing the Armistice of Mudros. Two days later the "Three Pashas" all fled into exile. On January 1, 1919, the new government expelled Enver Pasha from the army. He was tried in absentia in the Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20 for crimes of “plunging the country into war without a legitimate reason, forced deportation of Armenians and leaving the country without permission” and condemned to death.

Enver first went to Germany in October 1918 where he communicated and worked with German Communist figures like Karl Radek. In October 1919, Enver left for Moscow in order to serve as a secret envoy for his friend General Hans von Seeckt who wished for a German-Soviet alliance. In August 1920, Enver sent Seeckt a letter in which he offered on behalf of the Soviet Union the partition of Poland in return for German arms deliveries to Soviet Russia. Besides working for General von Seeckt, Enver envisioned cooperation between the new Soviet Russian government against the British, and went to Moscow. There he was well-received, and established contacts with representatives from Central Asia and other exiled CUP members as the director of the Soviet Government's Asiatic Department. He also met with Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin. He tried to support the Turkish national movement and corresponded with Mustafa Kemal, giving him the guarantee that he didn't intend to intervene in the movement in Anatolia. Enver Pasha went to Baku between September 1 and 8, 1920 to take part in the failed "Congress of Eastern Peoples", representing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. He later returned to Berlin where he tried to establish a secret organization that would transfer Russian military assistance to Turkey, an attempt that eventually failed.