How Turkey’s failed coup catapulted three Indian academics into chaos

They are still coming to terms with having been caught in circumstances not of their making.

April 29, 2017 09:49 pm | Updated 09:49 pm IST - NEW DELHI:

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, applauds the organisers after delivering a speech at an Atlantic Council event in Istanbul, Friday, April 28, 2017.  Erdogan repeated his criticism of the U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurdish militias that Turkey deems "terrorists." Erdogan and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet on May 16 in Washington. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, applauds the organisers after delivering a speech at an Atlantic Council event in Istanbul, Friday, April 28, 2017. Erdogan repeated his criticism of the U.S. alliance with Syrian Kurdish militias that Turkey deems "terrorists." Erdogan and US President Donald Trump are scheduled to meet on May 16 in Washington. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

The attempted coup on July 15, 2016 in Turkey, with its wide-ranging repercussions across Turkish society and institutions, has cast a shadow on India-Turkey ties. Officials in Ankara have confirmed that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who begins his visit to India on Sunday, will ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hand over Gulen sympathisers and some Turkish citizens, who are seen as crucial to the ongoing investigation into the coup.

President Erdogan blamed the Gulenists, a transnational Islamist group led by Fethullah Gulen — an exiled cleric who had been living in Pennsylvania since1998 — for engineering the failed putsch.

Among those affected by the political turmoil, over the last six months, are three Indians academics, who are still coming to terms with having been caught in circumstances not of their making.

Dr. Kashif Khan, with a Ph.D in international trade from Delhi’s Jamia Milia Islamia, was teaching at Mevlana University in the south western Turkish city of Konya. Mevlana was among the several well-known educational institutions linked to the Gulenist movement, which had awarded an honorary degree to Indian Vice-President Dr. Hamid Ansari in 2011.

Dreams shattered

Life was looking good for the young academic who had recently become engaged to a Turkish woman. The couple was planning to start life together as soon as he got a new job, preferably in the U.K. But the attempted coup shattered their dreams.

On July 15, when Dr. Khan boarded a bus to go to Dalaman en route to India to visit his ailing mother, little did he know that it would be his last meeting with his fiancée, Ruqayya (name changed) for the forseeable future.

The flight took off at 9 p.m. and he was out of the Turkish airspace when the tanks rolled out on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara. The subsequent bloodbath claimed nearly 265 lives and left thousands injured. Then came the great purge of Turkish institutions that functioned according to the principle of Hizmet (service), an idea followed by the Gulenists.

Mevlana University was shut down almost immediately as President Erdogan enforced a ban on schools, colleges, banks, and other charitable institutions that worked as part of the Gulen network and arrested thousands of alleged supporters.

Almost a year after his departure, Mr. Khan remains in Delhi, fighting to retrieve his belongings and dues from the university. He not only lost his job, veiled threats have been issued, indicating that he could be arrested for working in a Gulenist university.

“I was not afraid and still am not, and can go back to teach in the university, if Turkey will allow me,” Dr. Khan said, explaining that he was not involved in politics at all and was totally dedicated to academics.

He says his decision to go to Turkey was inspired by his teacher Anwar Alam, who was teaching in Zirve University in Gaziantep, near the Turkey-Syria border since 2013. According to the Indian Embassy sources in Ankara, Dr. Khan and Dr. Alam providentially escaped being arrested in the aftermath of the coup.

Prof. Alam, a well-known scholar in West Asian Studies, had taught in JNU and Jamia before getting an assignment in Zirve. In Turkey, in addition to teaching, he began writing against alleged cases of corruption by the government.

Fortunately for Dr. Alam, he was in Germany when the attempted coup took place. Soon the newspaper that published his articles, Today’s Zaman was shut down. Zirve University was also shut. Dr. Alam has not returned to Turkey on the advice of friends and has not even been unable to collect his belongings.

In fact Dr. Khan and Dr. Alam were part of a team of three Indian academics, who taught at the Gulen institutional network in Turkey. The third, who was also with Mevlana, has stayed on in Turkey and has requested anonymity fearing for family safety.

Dr. Khan’s fiancée was arrested on October 19 and has been imprisoned for allegedly being part of the Gulen network. He claims she is innocent. “There is nothing sinister about the Gulen movement,” he said.

However, not all agree. President Erdogan’s senior adviser Ilnur Cevik in an interview with The Hindu this week blamed the Gulenists for direct involvement in the coup and said even Mevlana University was not above suspicion. “Someone could set up a university and name it after Mahatma Gandhi but teach violent means of overthrowing the state. Would that be acceptable to India?” Mr Cevik said.

He claimed that behind the activities of education and charitable work, Gulenist institutions aimed at mobilising a national network of anti-Erdogan people who could take over power.

Dr. Khan is patently apolitical. “I had been a student of economics and had got jobs in Turkey and Poland but joined Mevlana as the university was better known. But then friends began calling me to stay away for a while,’’ he told The Hindu.

Dr. Khan is hopeful that the Turkish government would understand that there were thousands of Turkish and foreign nationals who worked in Gulenist institutions just to earn a decent living and had no political affiliations. He is also hopeful that the Turkish authorities would soon release his fiancée.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.