Pan-Turkism and Death, 1921-22
On July 30, 1921, with the Turkish War of Independence in full swing, Enver decided to return to Anatolia. He went to Batum to be close to the new border. However, Mustafa Kemal didn't want him among the Turkish revolutionaries. Mustafa Kemal had stopped all friendly ties with Enver Pasha and the CUP as early as 1914, and he explicitly rejected the pan-Turkic ideas and what Mustafa Kemal perceived as Enver Pasha's utopian goals (see: Kemalism). Enver Pasha changed his plans and traveled to Moscow where he managed to win the trust of the Soviet authorities. In November 1921 he was sent by Lenin to Bukhara in the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to help suppress an uprising against the local pro-Moscow Bolshevik regime. However, instead he made secret contacts with some of the rebellion's leaders and, along with a small number of followers, defected to the basmachi side. His aim was to unite the numerous basmachi groups under his own command and mount a co-ordinated offensive against the Bolsheviks in order to realize his pan-Turkish dreams. After a number of successful military operations he managed to establish himself as the rebels' supreme commander, and turned their disorganized forces into a small but well-drilled army. His command structure was built along German lines and his staff included a number of experienced Turkish officers.
From David Fromkin's - A Peace to End All Peace, New York 1989, chapter 56, page 487 - "However Enver's personal weaknesses reasserted themselves. He was a vain, strutting man who loved uniforms, medals and titles. For use in stamping official documents, he ordered a golden seal that described him as 'Commander-in-Chief of all the Armies of Islam, Son-in-Law of the Caliph and Representative of the Prophet.' Soon he was calling himself Emir of Turkestan, a practice not conducive to good relations with the Emir whose cause he served. At some point in the first half of 1922, the Emir of Bukhara broke off relations with him, depriving him of troops and much-needed financial support. The Emir of Afghanistan also failed to march to his aid."
On August 4, 1922, however, as he allowed his troops to celebrate the Idi Qurbon holiday and kept a guard of 30 men at his headquarters near the village of Ab-i-Derya near Dushanbe, the Red Army Bashkir cavalry brigade under the command of Yakov Melkumov (Agop Melkumian) launched a surprise attack. According to some sources, Enver and some 25 of his men mounted their horses and charged the approaching troops, during which Enver was killed by machine-gun fire. In his memoirs Enver Pasha's aide Yaver Suphi Bey stated that Enver Pasha died of a bullet wound right above his heart during a cavalry charge. Alternatively, according to Melkumov's memoirs, Enver managed to escape on horseback and hid for four days in the village of Chaghan. His hideout was located after a Red Army officer infiltrated the village in disguise. Melkumov's troops then stormed Chaghan, and in the ensuing combat Enver was killed by Melkumov himself.
From David Fromkin's - A Peace to End All Peace, chapter 56, page 488 with many cited references- "There are several accounts of how Enver died. According to the most persuasive of them, when the Russians attacked he gripped his pocket Koran and, as always, charged straight ahead. Later his decapitated body was found on the field of battle. His Koran was taken from his lifeless fingers and was filed in the archives of the Soviet secret police."
Enver's body was buried near Ab-i-Derya. In 1996, his remains were brought to Republic of Turkey and reburied in Istanbul Şişli Abide-i Hürriyet (Obelisk of Freedom) cemetery. Today in Modern Turkey Enver’s image remains controversial, since there are still those who blame the Pasha for the Turkish entrance into the World War and subsequent collapse of the empire. Yet quiet a significant number of Turks still see him as the man who failed to secure the ultimate Ottoman victory due to global conditions which were beyond his control, and therefore, tend to maintain rather supportive attitude towards the leader of Young Turks’ regime.
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