İsmail Enver quotes

İsmail Enver was an Ottoman military officer and politician, prominent during the late Ottoman Empire. As one of the leaders of the Young Turks, he played a key role in the empire’s politics and military campaigns, especially during World War I. He was influential in shaping modern Turkish history through his actions and leadership. Here are 13 of his quotes:

Real Turkish unification is my dearest wish, and any international political arrangement which will leave me a free hand to work for that, I will subscribe to. Turkey contains a great many Christians as well as Mohammedans. The latter I would regenerate from within, not from without. The West has little that we need save battleships and shrapnels, and if it would leave us alone we would not need even these.

İsmail Enver

The threat could be eliminated by removing the Armenians from the places where they lived and sending them to other places.

İsmail Enver

If the Russians retreat, they are done.

İsmail Enver

You are greatly mistaken. We have this country absolutely under our control. I have no desire to shift the blame onto our underlings and I am entirely willing to accept the responsibility myself for everything that has taken place.

İsmail Enver

We can then use Platonic means to quiet Armenians and Greeks, but in time of war we cannot investigate and negotiate. We must act promptly and with determination. I also think that the Armenians are making a mistake in depending upon the Russians. The Russians really would rather see them killed than alive. They are as great a danger to the Russians as they are to us. If they should form an independent government in Turkey, the Armenians in Russia would attempt to form an independent government there.

İsmail Enver

All who seek to enrich those who do not work should be destroyed.

İsmail Enver

We are taking care of our troops today, hence their loyalty. Formerly a rifle was given to a man and he had to shift for himself.

İsmail Enver

How could a person forget about the plains, the meadows, watered with the blood of our forefathers; abandon those places where Turkish raiders had hidden their steeds for a full four hundred years, with our mosques, our tombs, our dervish retreats, our bridges and our castles, to leave them to our slaves, to be driven out of Rumelia to Anatolia: this was beyond a person's endurance. I am prepared to gladly sacrifice the remaining years of my life to take revenge on the Bulgarians, the Greeks, and the Montenegrans.

İsmail Enver

The transformation of the Islamic world into one of revolution, as His Majesty has desired, had been in preparation for some time and had now been put into action.

İsmail Enver

Human and plague bacteria can't be friends..

İsmail Enver

The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.

İsmail Enver