Tuesday | 14 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
বাংলা
   
Tuesday | 14 January 2025 | Epaper

Bengali students in Ankara and Liberation War

Published : Saturday, 16 December, 2017 at 12:00 AM  Count : 559
Khurshid Alam
Activities were getting sluggish after December 1971 but we maintained our regular communication with Bengali diplomats and staff members, and also with my Indian and Russian contacts.  Arrival of Memos and info materials from BGE started to falter and possibly by March 1972 stopped for good.  
I never heard from Mr. Syed or anyone else from the Bangladesh government. After all, the job was done, Bangladesh was now an independent country, who needed people like us? Wasn't this the fate of most Muktijodhdha's, especially those from rural areas and without connections?  Who needs to remember them, their sacrifices, except on paper, and that on some hallowed occasions?
One February morning, most probably on 21st February 1972 I got a message that some Bengali diplomats were defecting and leaving Ankara with their families. Afsarul Qadir was not married at the time. They requested my presence at Ankara airport in case anything untoward was to occur.  
This came out of the blue as none of the diplomats had earlier informed of their plans though I was the one who had linked them with the Indian Embassy and with Amirul Islam in Beirut.  In any case, I immediately took a bus to the airport and met them there.
The four diplomats were Quamrul Huda, Amir Khushru, Mustafa Jamal and Afsarul Qadir. They were quite nervous (and scared?) and were very relieved to see me. They confided that all the travel arrangements were made by Verma and Syed Amirul Islam in Beirut.  
As I had a good grasp of Turkish it was quite easy to help them with the departure formalities and they departed for Beirut without any hassle. Wafa, Shaukat Ali and the non-diplomatic staff members, departed much later.
On a weekend just about a week or two after the departure of the diplomats, Habib and I were walking down to our friend Galib's apartment when we were met at the corner store by two plainclothes policemen. Imran, our flatmate and Mintu, a visitor remained behind. The policemen stopped us and asked us to go back to the apartment. When we showed our reluctance they grabbed our arms and walked us up the hill to our apartment and once we were inside they called someone on their walkie- talkie.  
Within a very short time we saw a fleet of army jeeps and two army trucks pull up and heavily-armed soldiers and riot police jumping down and surround our apartment from all sides. A hovering helicopter also joined from above. People from neighboring apartments peered through windows and balconies at the spectacle.  
An Officer shouted into his bullhorn and warned everyone not to get out of their homes, giving an impression that it was raid on a terrorist den. Soon after, the officer shouted into his bullhorn and ordered all the occupants of our apartment to come out with their hands raised.
All four of us, Habib, Imran, Mintu and I were escorted into a jeep. Habib and I were seated in one row with two riot policemen armed with semi-automatic rifles on either side of us; Mintu and Imran were similarly seated on another row in the same jeep.  All this while plain clothes and uniformed policemen ransacked our apartment looking for arms and/or any other incriminating materials.
Fortunately some days ago, unknown to me, Tahseen had got hold of all my leftist books, leaflets and other Devrimciler materials and some stolen documents from the Pakistan Embassy and had dumped them all in a ditch on the backside of our apartment.  Finding nothing of interest to them, they hauled us to the Emniyet Saray (Police Headquarters).  
Almost as soon as we started on our way, Imran told Mintu in Sylheti "bondukta kharya lou na" indicating the semi-automatic guns of their escorts.  I jokingly censured him in Bangla that "bonduk" was also a Turkish word for gun. Imran got scared to the verge of almost spoiling his pants.
After reaching the Emniyet Saray we were led to a cell for interrogation by the Turkish Siyasi Polis (Political Police). This was a group notorious for their harsh torture and interrogation techniques. While waiting, they started enquiring about our legal status in Turkey, hoping to get something negative on us for them to pound upon.
I then realized that on oversight I had not renewed my visa. The immigration police officer pulling up my papers noticed this and knew that I would be in deep trouble if he told the truth. He surprisingly told the enquiring officers that everything was in order. Later he winked at me and told me to come by in a day or two and get the visa renewed.  We were all tense contemplating the possibility of torture.
I approached the immigration police officer and asked his favour in letting me make a call. After some reluctance, as he did not want to be seen as sympathetic to us, he relented. I made a call to a friend whose father was an influential general (Tahseen and I had earlier visited their home) and asked his help in our predicament.
At the time the military was very powerful and influential. Her father called the police headquarter and asked them to look after us. The police personnel suddenly became amicable and after treating us to some food released us, but did not bother to drop us back home. We all huddled in a 'dolmus' (taxi) in the dark wintry night part of the way and then walked the rest to our home. If the immigration officer was not kind that day we all four would have a different story to tell!
Turkish politics and daily life were in some turmoil even in early 1972. Two students of our university METU, Deniz Gezmis and another student (Yilmaz?) of our university METU were earlier accosted by the army as anarchists, tortured and languishing in jail, were hanged in April May 1972.  
Somewhere around the same time two revolutionary Iranian students were being hunted by Savak, the then notorious Iranian Intelligence agency. These two were fleeing Turkey and were captured and kidnapped by Savak agents from Istanbul and whisked away to Iran where they were subsequently hanged.
In this backdrop of these discouraging events, my Turkish friends and well-wishers advised me to be always ready for anything detrimental. They assured me that IF the circumstance so dictated to give them a couple of hours' notice or even go to their home and they would hide me and whisk me out of the country through back channels. From then onwards I used to carry my passport and finances with me always.
Around March April 1972, I was offered admission in University of Leeds, UK.  In early May I was offered a summer job in the Olympic village in Munich, then West Germany starting from June 1972. On arrival at Munich, I was able to get jobs at the Olympic village for Tahseen and his wife, Habib, Rafique and some of my Pakistani sympathizer friends.
Note: It is a real task recollecting reminiscing events from forty-six years ago, i e 1971, and exact dates and events are a little bit murky. Readers will please forgive any discrepancies. Furthermore, related papers/documents have been misplaced and are not instantly available, not least the quandaries of moving changing homes.

Khurshid Alam returned to Bangladesh to work for the Petrobangla and now he lives in Atlanta






LATEST NEWS
MOST READ
Also read
God's oppressed children
Listening to Joy - the civilized trailblazer
Why has Latin America turned away from the left?
Safeguarding banking services growth in Bangladesh
Time for an inclusive quality education
Erdogan subjected Turkey to a year of cynical doublespeak
A tale of two valleys
The economists who stole Christmas
Editor : Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury
Published by the Editor on behalf of the Observer Ltd. from Globe Printers, 24/A, New Eskaton Road, Ramna, Dhaka.
Editorial, News and Commercial Offices : Aziz Bhaban (2nd floor), 93, Motijheel C/A, Dhaka-1000.
Phone: PABX- 41053001-06; Online: 41053014; Advertisement: 41053012.
E-mail: district@dailyobserverbd.com, news©dailyobserverbd.com, advertisement©dailyobserverbd.com, For Online Edition: mailobserverbd©gmail.com
🔝
close