Nuri Killigil

Nuri Killigil (1889–1949), also known as Nuri Pasha, was an Ottoman general and the half-brother of the Minister of War Enver Pasha. He organised Special Organization operations in Libya, commanded the Army of Islam in the Caucasus and took Baku in 1918, and after the war built a weapons factory at Istanbul in whose explosion he died in 1949. ¹

An infantry machine-gun captain, Nuri Bey was sent to Libya on a German ship in February 1915 with Major Jafar al-Askari and 10,000 pieces of gold, to organise and coordinate the operations of the Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) with local forces against the Italians and the British. In 1917 the Ottoman General Staff created the Africa Groups Command for the Libyan coastal regions and appointed the lieutenant colonel Nuri Bey its first commander. ¹

After the Russian Revolution took Russia out of the war, his elder half-brother Enver Pasha called him back from Libya, promoted him, and gave him the volunteer-based Army of Islam to form and command. He reached Yelizavetpol (Ganja) on 25 May 1918 and organised his forces; on 15 September 1918, after the Battle of Baku, the Army of Islam and its Azerbaijani allies entered Baku. The English article states, citing Erickson (2001) and the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, that during his command Nuri presided over the massacre of 30,000 Armenian civilians in the city of Baku, and its categories file him among the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. In Turkish memory he is known as "Bakü Fatihi", the Conqueror of Baku. ^{1 2}

After the war Nuri settled in Istanbul and founded a weapons factory at Sütlüce. On 2 March 1949 the factory exploded, killing him. He was buried at the Edirnekapı Martyrs' Cemetery in Istanbul. The sources disagree on his birth: both articles' infoboxes give 1889 at Manastır (Bitola), which this record follows, but the Turkish article's lead and categories give 1890 and Istanbul, and Wikidata also carries an unsupported value of 1881; his birth is therefore recorded as debated. ^{2 3}

No source consulted states a religion for him: neither article names one in text or infobox, and Wikidata carries no religion statement for him. His service with the Special Organization and his command of a force named the Army of Islam are organisational and military facts, not an attestation of personal affiliation, so under the museum's two-source rule his faith is recorded as unknown. ^{1 2 3}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.