Articles

Enver Pasha, Djemal Pasha and Talat Pasha between Moscow and Berlin (1918–1922)

Vostok/Oriens '2018, №4

DOI: 10.31857/S086919080000457-9

 
This article examines the emigrant period of life of Enver Pasha, Djemal Pasha, and Talaat Pasha. This short but dynamic and eventful period began with their flight in November 1918 from Istanbul into Berlin. The emigrant time of life of the Young Turk leaders is well-studied, yet the Berlin phase of their emigration is often ignored. Although Enver and Djemal made a short stay in Berlin, the significance of the city and Germany for their follow-up should not be underestimated. The collapse of continental Russian, German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires resulted from the First World War turned their territory into an arena where new political actors engaged in a brutal race and formed ephemeral coalitions. This article takes a look at the initial period of emigration of triumvir’s connected mainly with Berlin and studies contexts of their interactions with various political forces within emerging network, the core of which were Germany, the Soviet Russia and Turkey. The article also traces a reaction of the winner countries—Great Britain and France—on visible signs of consolidation of “the anti-system” movements. Enver Pasha, Djemal Pasha and Talaat Pasha, on the one hand, represented losing Ottoman elite and therefore belonged to the old, “departing” world. But this estimate will not be so unequivocal if one takes into attention the active participation of former Ottoman leaders in the formation of interaction networks, ideological practices, their ambiguous role in the national movement of Turkey, in Soviet-Turkish and German-Turkish relations after 1918.

Keywords: Emigration, Pan-Islamism, Young Turks, Empires, Bolsheviks, Turkey, Germany

Pages: С. 55–69