Süleyman Nuri

Nuri was born in 1895 into a peasant family.[1][2] He was a graduate of the non-Commissioned Officers school and following his graduation he joined the Ottoman Army.[2]

During World War I Nuri was assigned to the army branch in Eastern Anatolia where he was injured.[2] Following this incident Nuri left the army and joined the Russian forces in February 1917.[2] He converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity and also, became a Russian citizen.[2] In late 1917 he settled in Baku where he worked as a mechanic on ships.[2] When Baku was occupied by the British in August 1918 he was arrested and detained.[2] He was released from the prison soon and began to work for the Red Army in Dagestan which was not a success for him.[2] He represented the Caucasus Bolsheviks at the Erzurum Congress held by Turkish revolutionaries in 1919.[2] He was among the founders of the Communist Party which was established in Baku in May 1920.[3] Nearly all founding figures of the party were supporters of Enver Pasha, but Nuri was not.[2] He was part of the central committee of the party.[4] However, he was expelled from the party soon and assigned to Armenia to help the Bolsheviks there.[2] Nuri was arrested there by the Turkish forces, but he was sent to Baku later.[2]

He was elected a member of the council for action and propaganda at Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku in 1920.[1] The same year he was jailed on Nargin Island, Soviet Azerbaijan.[5] He served in the military-revolutionary committee and participated in the Third World Congress of the Comintern as a delegate which was held in Moscow in June to July 1921.[1] Nuri was appointed people's commissar for justice in the first Armenian Bolshevik government of the Soviet Armenia.[3] In 1925 he attended the Communist University of the Toilers of the East for a short time, but soon expelled together with other Turkish communists.[5] Until 1936 Nuri worked as a mechanical engineer in Soviet Azerbaijan.[2] Then he was sent by the Soviet authorities to Turkey for espionage activities.[2] However, he did not manage to form a spy cell and decided to return to Baku.[2] He was arrested by Turkish security forces while he was trying to enter Azerbaijan and was tried and sentenced to imprisonment.[2] Following his release he left Turkey and went to Odessa in January 1958.[2] He died in Moscow in 1966.[1][3]

His biography book, Çanakkale Siperlerinden TKP Yönetimine. Uyanan Esirler (Turkish: From Çanakkale Trenches to TKP Management. Awakening Captives), was published in Turkey in 2002.[6][7]