After the war the three were put on trial (in their absence) and sentenced to death, although the sentences were not carried out. Talaat and Djemal were assassinated in exile in 1921 and 1922 by Armenians; Enver was also killed by an Armenian in Tajikistan in 1922 while trying to raise a Muslim anti-Russian insurrection. After World War I and the ensuing Turkish War of Independence, much of the population of the newly established Republic of Turkey as well its founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk widely criticized the Three Pashas for having caused the Ottoman Empire's entrance into World War I, and the subsequent collapse of the state. As early as 1912, Atatürk (then just Mustafa Kemal) had severed his ties to the Three Pashas' Committee of Union and Progress, dissatisfied with the direction that they had taken the party, as well as developing a rivalry with Enver Pasha. Although Enver Pasha later attempted to join the Turkish War of Independence, the Ankara government under Atatürk blocked his return to Turkey and his efforts to join the war effort.