Abstract:

Enver Pasha, one of the most important figures o f t he Turkish World, had to leave the country when the Ottoman Empire became one of the defeated states in the World War I. In 1921, he joined the Basmachi Movement, which was held in 1917-1924 in order to restore independency of Turkestan, and brought new hopes to the struggle. The Bolsheviks were very uncomfortable with Enver Pasha’s activities carried out with the intention of raising the national awareness among all Turks in Turkestan and gather them under a single flag. Enver Pasha, who spent the last years of his life with the struggle in the Caucasus and in Turkestan, became the leader of the Basmachi Movement and fought the Russians. However, this struggle for independence in Turkestan did not become successful. Enver Pasha, who was defeated militarily, was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1922, and all Turkestan was grieved by his death. The moment of Pasha’s death entailed various speculations. This article explains Mustafa Çokay’s impressions of Enver Pasha (1881-1922) based on the articles penned under various titles in the mag Yaş Türkistan by Mustafa Çokayoğlu (1890-1941), a political actor and an intellectual who was the leader of the Turks, the Turkish Unity, and the independent Turkestan ideal(s) and worked to announce this to the whole world. Çokay evaluated the importance of Enver Pasha for the Turkestani, his relationship with the Bolsheviks, the Enver Pasha perception in the Turkestani and European press, the speculations about his death, and the reasons for his failure in Turkestan, based on what the Turkestani who were with Enver Pasha told and what he personally witnessed.

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