A dominant member of the young Turks ruling the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Anwar Pasha joined the military and defied Sultan Abdul Hamid Khan in 1908 and forced him to restore the Constitution. The Young Turks established a government under Mahmud Shaukat Pasha but were nearly overthrown in 1909. Anwar Pasha came to the defence of Benghazi against the Italians in 1911 from Berlin, where he was serving as a military attaché. He re-occupied Edirne and Gallipoli in 1913. In 1918 the Young Turks resumed control of the government and a major purge followed in which Anwar Pasha sacked over 1,200 officers in one day. In 1914 Anwar Pasha was minister of war and signed an alliance with Germany on August 2 and thus Turkey entered into World War I. When the allied forces gained victory in the First World War, he was forced to flee to Germany and then to Russia, where he died fighting leading anti-Bolshevik insurrection among the central Asian Turks near Baukhara on 4 August 1922. Anwar Pasha was born of a Turkish father and an Albanian mother in the Black sea town of Apana.