People of the Revolution and the USSR

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1881–1922 ✕ Killed fighting the Red Army

War minister among the Three Pashas who took the Ottomans into the war and was a main perpetrator of the Armenian genocide

Born in Constantinople, he joined the Committee of Union and Progress and became a hero of the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. After the 1913 coup he became war minister and ruled the empire with Talat and Djemal as the Three Pashas. He took the Ottomans into the First World War in alliance with Germany, and after losing most of his army at Sarıkamış in December 1914 blamed the defeat on the Armenians. He was a main perpetrator of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides. After the defeat he fled and was sentenced to death in absentia. He worked with the Bolsheviks, then in 1921 in Central Asia went over to the Basmachi rebels, and was killed fighting the Red Army in 1922.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1881–1938 ○ Natural death

Gallipoli commander who led the national movement and founded the Republic of Turkey as its first president

Born in Salonica, he joined the Young Turk movement and made his name defending Gallipoli in the First World War. After the defeat he landed at Samsun in May 1919 to organise the national movement against occupation, and in 1920 convened the Grand National Assembly in Ankara. With gold and arms from the Bolshevik government he defeated the Greek army, and the Treaty of Lausanne recognised the victory. In these years the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia’s Armenians and Greeks was completed through massacres, deportations and population exchange. He abolished the sultanate in 1922 and in 1923 became the first president of the republic, pursuing secularising reforms and Turkification under one-party rule. He died in 1938.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1882–1948 ○ Heart attack

Eastern Front commander of the Turkish War of Independence who invaded Armenia in 1920 and imposed the Treaty of Alexandropol

Born in Istanbul in 1882, he graduated at the top of his class from the Ottoman Military College and fought at Gallipoli, at Kut and on the Caucasus front in the First World War. Joining Mustafa Kemal’s national movement, he commanded the Eastern Front in the War of Independence. He invaded Armenia in September 1920 and took Kars and Alexandropol; during the campaign his army displaced and massacred tens of thousands of Armenian civilians. He signed the Treaty of Alexandropol in December and the Treaty of Kars in 1921. In 1924 he founded the Progressive Republican Party, the first opposition party, which was closed; elected speaker of the Grand National Assembly in 1946, he died in office in 1948.

Turkey state institutions Nationalism 1884–1973 ○ Natural death

Officer who negotiated the Treaty of Lausanne and succeeded Atatürk as Turkey’s second president

Born in Smyrna, an Ottoman officer, he won the First and Second Battles of İnönü in the War of Independence as chief of the General Staff and commander of the Western Front. As Turkey’s chief negotiator at Lausanne in 1922–1923 he faced down Curzon and replaced the Treaty of Sèvres with the Treaty of Lausanne. As prime minister for most of Atatürk’s presidency he carried out the secularising reforms; after the Sheikh Said revolt he pushed the Turkification of the Kurds, and he is considered one of those responsible for the Dersim massacre. Elected second president in 1938, he took the title “National Chief” and kept Turkey in armed neutrality in the Second World War. After defeat in the 1950 election he handed over power peacefully. He died in 1973.

Nationalism 1889–1960 → Died in exile

Crimean Tatar politician who ran the military and foreign affairs of the Crimean People’s Republic and led the national movement in exile

Born in 1889 into a family of wealthy peasants in Kizil-Tash in the Yalta district, he met Noman Çelebicihan at the law faculty of Istanbul University. After publishing The Oppressed Crimean Tatar Nation in the 20th Century in 1911 he escaped arrest by studying in Paris, and on his return in 1914 he went through cadet school and became an ensign. In 1917 he briefly edited Millet and became director of military and foreign affairs in the Directory set up by the Qurultay. Driven out by the Bolsheviks in January 1918, he fled to Kyiv; under the German occupation he became foreign minister of Sulkiewicz’s Crimean Regional Government and sought recognition of its independence in Berlin. After the German withdrawal he went to Istanbul, founded the newspaper Emel and supported Prometheism. He took the surname Kırımer in 1934 and died in Istanbul in 1960.