While stationed in Ottoman Macedonia, Enver joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), an organization affiliated with the Young Turks movement that was agitating against Sultan Abdul Hamid II's despotic rule.

However, a series of crises in the Empire, including the 31 March Incident, the Balkan Wars, and the power struggle with the Freedom and Accord Party, left Enver and the Unionists disillusioned with liberal Ottomanism.

After the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état brought the CUP directly to power, Enver became War Minister, while Talaat assumed control over the civilian government.

The Ottoman Military Tribunal convicted him and other Unionists and sentenced them to death in absentia for bringing the Empire into World War I and organizing massacres against Greeks and Armenians.

"Pasha" was the honorary title granted to Ottoman military officers upon promotion to the rank of Mirliva (major general).

[15] Enver's father, Ahmed (c. 1860–1947), was either a bridge-keeper in Monastir (modern Bitola)[16] or an Albanian small town public prosecutor in the Balkans.

[24][23] In the early twentieth century some prominent Young Turk members such as Enver developed a strong interest in the ideas of Gustave Le Bon.

[25] For example, Enver saw deputies as mediocre and in reference to Le Bon he thought that as a collective mind they had the potential to become dangerous and be the same as a despotic leader.

[19] Approving the decision by the committee to assassinate his brother in law Lieutenant Colonel Ömer Nâzım, Enver under instructions from CUP headquarters traveled from Selanik (Thessaloniki) to Tikveş on 26 June 1908 to establish a band.

[36] Enver sent an ultimatum to the Inspector General on 11 July 1908 and demanded that within 48 hours Abdul Hamid II issue a decree for CUP members that had been arrested and sent to Constantinople to be freed.

[39] As the revolution spread by the third week and more officers deserted the army to join the cause, Enver and Niyazi got like minded officials and civilian notables to send multiple petitions to the Ottoman palace.

[41] In Salonica, he spoke from the balconies of the Grand Hôtel D'Angleterre to a crowd in the city center, where he declared that absolutism was finished, and Ottomanism would prevail.

[45] Instead, Niyazi and Enver as leaders of the revolution elevated their positions to near legendary status, with their images placed on postcards and distributed throughout the Ottoman state.

Being able to communicate in German,[59] Enver Pasha, along with Talaat and Halil Bey were architects of the Ottoman-German Alliance, and expected a quick victory in the war that would benefit the Ottoman Empire.

Later, after many towns on the peninsula had been destroyed and women and children killed by the Allied bombardment, Enver proposed setting up a concentration camp for the remaining French and British citizens in the empire.

Turkish troops were deserting freely, and when Enver visited Beirut in June 1917, soldiers were forbidden to be stationed along his route for fear that he would be assassinated.

The Third Army under Vehib Pasha was also moving forward to pre-war borders and towards the First Republic of Armenia, which formed the frontline in the Caucasus.

[70] Enver first attempted to link up with Halil and Nuri to reopen the Caucasus campaign, but his boat ran aground and hearing the army was demobilizing he gave up and went to Berlin like the other Unionists émigrés did.

He settled in Babelsberg, and in April 1919 after meeting with Karl Radek with Talaat, he took on the role of a secret envoy for his friend General Hans von Seeckt who wished for a German-Soviet alliance.

While Enver was determined to make a grand entrance from the sky, Şakir and Cemal gave up and instead joined a Russian prisoner of war convoy heading back to their homeland.

There he was well-received, and established contacts with representatives from Central Asia and other exiled CUP members as the director of the Soviet Government's Asiatic Department.

A whole hall full of Orientals broke into shouts, with scimitars and yataghans brandished aloft: 'Death to imperialism" All the same, genuine understanding with the Islamic world...was still difficult.

[75]Much has been written about the poor relations between Enver and Mustafa Kemal, two men who played pivotal roles in the Turkish history of the 20th century.

Enver disliked Mustafa Kemal for his circumspect attitude toward the political agenda pursued by his Committee of Union and Progress, and regarded him as a serious rival.

In November 1921 he was sent by Lenin to Bukhara in the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic to help suppress the Basmachi Revolt against the local pro-Moscow Bolshevik regime.

His aim was to unite the numerous Basmachi groups under his own command and mount a co-ordinated offensive against the Bolsheviks in order to realise his pan-Turkic dreams.

After a number of successful military operations he managed to establish himself as the rebels' supreme commander, and turned their disorganized forces into a small but well-drilled army.

[90] Following renewed hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno Karabakh region in 2020, Enver Pasha's role during World War I was praised by Turkish President Erdoğan during an Azeri victory parade in Baku.

On 16 October 1945, their son Haşmet Orbay, Enver's nephew, shot and killed a physician named Neşet Naci Arzan, an event known as the "Ankara murder [tr]".

When this story reached Istanbul, the grand vizier, Hüseyin Hilmi Pasha decided to exploit Enver's marital eligibility by arranging a rapprochement between the Committee for Union and Progress and the imperial family.