Enver Paşa as an Artist
by Murat Bardakçı / published in Hürriyet, 22 January 2005, translated by Altay Atlı

We have always known Enver Paşa as a soldier. For us, he was the person brought the Ottoman Empire into the First World War without a reason. After the defeat, his Pan-Turkic dreams took him to another adventure. His goal was to bring the Russian hegemony in Central Asia to an end and eventually establish a Turkic state there. When he was fighting for this cause, on 4 August 1922 he and his men were attacked by Russian troops and Enver lost his life while fighting on the frontline at the Tchegan Hill, in what is today Tadjikistan. He was only 41 years old.

Today, on this page, you can see a completely different Enver Paşa. It is the “painter” Enver and not the “soldier.” An album of 60 drawings made by Enver Paşa will soon be available for sale by Portakal Arts and Culture Centre.

It is not the artist of this album that has an interesting story, but also the drawings themselves. After Turkey has lost the First World War, where she was allied with Germany, leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress fled Turkey on board a German submarine on the night of 1 November 1918. Minister of War Enver Paşa was one of the passengers.

The Paşa has devoted his exile years to the efforts of liberating Central Asia from Russians and establishing a Turkic Empire there. To this end, in spring 1920, he attempted to fly to Russia on a small plane and with fake identity. However his plane crashed in Latvia and this mysterious passenger was imprisoned at a detention camp were Bolshevik soldiers were kept.

There wasn’t strict control at the camp and inmates were even allowed to go to the town. None of them was planning to escape because they knew that it was impossible for them to return to their home country. Enver Paşa, who had no money at all, began to paint, so that he could have a better life there. He painted other inmates and Latvians, in return for a fee.

Enver Paşa’s imprisonment went on for 4 months. He found a way to escape and returned to Germany, taking the drawings he has not sold yet with him. He prepared an album, which he devoted to his wife Naciye Sultan whom he called “Cici”.

On the first page, he wrote: “These are the drawings I made during my imprisonment in Latvia between 10 April and 6 July 1920 and later during my trip from Riga to Germany. I present them to my Cici as a souvenir. Berlin, 28 July 1920, Your Enver.”

On this page you can see some of the drawings from Enver’s album. Could you ever think that Enver Paşa, who had once send hundreds of thousands of people to the front line with one single word, was also a painter and made drawings in order to survive his days in imprisonment?