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MY CURRICULUM VITAE
I- MY CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL YEARS
I was born in Beyþehir District, Konya on August 28th, 1917 as the son of Hafýz Alizade Hasan Efendi, the Avþar Chieftain from the Hacý Osmanoðullarý dynasty, and Ayþe Haným, the daughter of Hacý Ali Çiftçi descending from a notable farmer family of Beyþehir. My Grandfather, Hafýz Ali Efendi, was a tradesman in Beyþehir, transporting goods and carrying out wholesale trade between Ýzmir and Beyþehir, and was left alone after my father and younger uncle, Osman having been drafted into the Army during the Balkan War and World War I, respectively, and appointment of my middle uncle, Abdullah Efendi, as a professor to the Fatih Madrasa in Istanbul after his graduation from Ýplikçi Madrasa in Konya, and, as he had been incapable of managing his personal affairs properly due to his old age, he called in his distant relatives’ adult children to both take care of his business and earn a living for themselves and retiring from the business life in reliance on those adult children, he passed away in 1334 (1918 AD in Gregorian Calendar) when I was only six months old. My father, Hasan Efendi, who had fought at various fronts during the War of Independence, was discharged from the military when he was a sergeant major of the Guardsmen Troops at the Akþehir Headquarters of the Western Army. My younger uncle, Osman Efendi, was also discharged from the military as a veteran after World War I. My middle uncle, Abdullah Efendi, had returned to Konya after the occupation of Istanbul and opened a drapery store with the support of Mehmet Abaoðlu of Konya’s notables and also continued to serve as a religion teacher at Konya Schools of Teachers and as a clergyman at the Aziziye Mosque. After 1950, he was appointed to Konya Religious Affairs Administration and continued to serve as a clergyman until his death. My father, Hasan Efendi, had worked as a cash collector at the Beyþehir Fiscal Directorate and passed away in 1931 due to gastric ulcer. An exemplary period of our family life witnessed the shift from a happy and wealthy environment where Arabian nannies were serving us, to a state of poverty, between Balkan Wars and War of Independence. The actual reason of this poverty was that those people to whom my merchant grandfather entrusted his assets had actually misappropriated them. Grandchildren of these people are currently living a wealthy life in distinguished districts of Ýstanbul, like Emirgan and the like. I am the third child of my family’s four children; one girl and three boys. After finishing primary school in Beysehir, I was sent to Konya to complete my secondary school education. I enrolled in Konya Teachers’ School to become a teacher in 1930. I will avail myself of the opportunity to share some of the interesting memories from my primary school ages in Beysehir. I recall my teacher from juvenile school hitting with a long stick on the heads of students who answered wrongly or couldn’t answer his questions or those who were naughty, from where he was sitting cross-legged. Our house in Beysehir was on the lakeside. During holidays, we always spent our time swimming, or running around the lake. Once, from our boat I jumped into the water in an extreme upright position. I was hurt when my chest hit a stake covered with mussles at the bottom. My friends got me out of the water and helped me heal without medication by covering my bleeding scar with the spiders’ web they collected from the hayloft. My friends and I learned swimming without lessons. To prove that we could swim, we were swimming around rushes in 500 meter length and 50 meter width along the approximately 200 meter coast. My excitement is revived when I recall the day I first experienced this. Because, while I was swimming alone at the back of the rushes, I saw a big water snake wrapping itself around the rushes. I finished my swimming tour without big panic because I knew that water snakes were harmless. Another one of my memories is about ice skating. During cold days of winter months, freshwater lake used to freeze over. When it got thick enough, we used to skate. We used to take ice pieces of 50 cm in diameter to the ice storage in the Eþrefoðlu Mosque. During summer, those who needed ice used to take pieces from here to their homes. One day our friends suggested racing on the newly frozen, shining ice. Since I was one of the lightest among them, they wanted me to skate first, so that they would determine whether it had enough carrying capacity. I still get excited when I consider the possibility of falling into the water had the ice broken. My first attempt was successful. After me, a few more friends also skated and during the attempt of our friend Mustafa, who was elder and heavier than us, the ice broke and he fell into the cold waters of the lake. Out of fear, we managed to get across the solid side. Meanwhile, we saw our epileptic friend named Halil trying to grab him by getting near him, lying on the ice. With the help of another friend, they managed to get Mustafa out of the water. Since the weather was very cold, we buried half-frozen Mustafa to a near bulk of dung up to his neck. After his body temperature turned to normal, we took Mustafa to his home. Another time I was flying a kite over the earthen roof of a house. In an effort to do the same, while running backwards, Mustafa fell on the stone-laid courtyard of the house. He was heavily injured and for the second time came back from the edge of death. In 1927 when we were going to primary school we used to have our lunch with halvah inside the bread we bought from the bakery in return for five kurush, since our homes were far away from the school. One day after filling our stomachs with the same meal, we still had time for class, so we decided to swim in the canal with friends. The mentioned canal was made by the Germans before World War I in order to irrigate the plain of Konya with the water of Lake Beyþehir, which is a 50 squaremeter canal fed by a regulator with a capacity of pumping 40 cubic meter water per second. Left and right flanks of the canal were surrounded with gardens. Gardens’ water requirement was met through the stream power, or the wheels rotated by animals like horses or donkeys. The more the amount of water discharged from the regulator, the faster the speed of the water would be. The above mentioned day was in June, therefore since all the lids were open discharging 2.400 cubic meters water, the flow velocity of water was maximum. We agreed to have a bet among friends. The thing to do was to try to cross the canal with the minimum angle possible, and to come back. Reckless of how tiring and dangerous the mission was, I jumped in. Since the water was flowing fast, the way to cross with the minimum angle was through swimming against the current. The energy I spent for this purpose must have been well beyond my capacity that halfway through, I lost my balance. Whichever side of the coast I looked seemed like miles away. My friends who saw me in this state came to rescue me. This incident taught me a lesson and since then I’ve never attempted doing something beyond my power and capacity. In 1931, while we were living in a single room – which actually was a hovel – we rented in Þeyh Sadrettin Neighborhood in Konya and I was still attending to school, my father passed away. Under the auspices of my uncle Abdullah ULUBAY, I continued my education. In 1933, upon the relocation of Male Teachers’ School from Konya to Adana, Konya High School moved into the emptied school building. Thus, I had the possibility to get a high school education. In 1933, during the preparations for the celebration of the tenth year of the Republic, we memorized the 10th Year Anthem. To join in the ceremony, we ordered a dark blue dress made of British fabric in return for 18 TL except the fabric costs which would be assumed by the tailor. Besides, we needed to buy patent leather shoe for 2,5 TL. My uncle sent me and his son to a shoe manufacturing shop to order the shoes. We found the shop, but after seeing the writing on the wall that said; “I cannot give on credit, I cannot go after, even if I go after I cannot find, even if I find I cannot take”, we came back home. When we told about the situation to my uncle, he got mad at us and said “that is not for us.” The next day, we went to the same place and ordered the shoes. For the 10th anniversary ceremony of the Republic, we gathered in Alaaddin Square in Konya and sang the 10th Year Anthem with the company of radio. We also listened to Atatürk’s Speech. The aphorism in his Speech, (Happy is the one who calls himself a Turk) had become my guide. As the Turks that won the War of Independence, our brains were knead with slogans of (‘It does not become the Turk to stand still, the Turk pioneer; the Turk go forth’ we existed before history, we exist after history as well). Growing up in this climate, in July of 1937 I finished Konya High School with the ‘very well’ degree. Despite having vineyards, gardens, fields, herds with lambs, cows and water buffalos in Beysehir, we were short of money. When we were students, Konya was the third largest city with 54.000 population after Istanbul and Ýzmir, yet we still could only lighten our houses with gas lambs. At nights, we used to study under the light of gas lamp with five candles capacity. My cousin Ali ULUBAY, one year my senior, was sent to England upon having won Sumerbank’s exam after high school. I, on the other hand, was admitted to Istanbul Faculty of Medicine on scholarship, which was a right granted to those having finished high school with a ‘very well’ degree. But with the influence of the letters my cousin, Ali ULUBAY, has sent me from England, I’d decided to take Sumerbank’s exam. At the same time, I applied to take the exam of Istanbul Technical University. I went to Istanbul to wait for the announcement of exam days. A while later, exam days of Sumerbank and Istanbul Technical University were announced. Since two exams were on the same day, I had to make a choice. I decided to take Sumerbank’s exam and took the Ankara train. Train stopped at Eskiþehir station. I was looking outside from the window of the compartment I was sitting in when a train coming from the opposite direction also stopped at the station. Inside the window of this train that was right in front of my window, I saw Hasan ERDENER, who graduated from Konya High School in the same year as I. My friend got out from his train and came next to me to chat, and said that he chose Istanbul Technical University’s exam. While talking about these, we couldn’t realize that my friend’s train started to move. So, he had to come to Ankara with me to take Sumerbank’s exam. The wooden luggage of my friend was also left in the train he missed. Sumerbank conducted the exam in the former Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, where Ataturk’s mortal remains were preserved before its transfer to Anitkabir. Exam questions covered maths, physics, chemistry and foreign language. The question on French was the translation of that same day’s editorial in Cumhuriyet newspaper, which was about Napoleon’s exile to Saint Helen Island. Me and Hasan ERDENER were among the 15 winners of the exam. Thus, I was about to start a new life after my high school graduation. In the beginning of December 1937, I set off with train from Istanbul to Germany’s capital Berlin. I felt sick after a meal I’d eaten in Sofia station. After three days of travel, I arrived at the Anhalter Bahnhoff train station in Berlin and I didn’t know a single word of German. I went by taxi to the address Sumerbank had given me. This was a house that Sumberbank student inspector was using as an office. Inspector Ibrahim AKCURA wasn’t at home. His wife got me in and called a Sumerbank student studying in Berlin, whose name I recall as Nazif ORBAY. Nazif ORBAY arrived shortly after, and took me to a pension. I felt really happy when I bumped into my friend Hasan ERDENER and Arif ULU – who graduated from Izmir High School – there. After staying in Berlin for a while, I was sent by the student inspector to a boarding school in the city of Manheim to learn German. There, I met with Yekta ULGEN, a Sumerbank student. In the winter semester following New Year’s Eve, Yekta ULGEN went to the Technical University in Darmstadt to start his education. So, I was left alone as the only Turkish. I was going to the school at 7.30 in the morning, and coming back to pension at 18.00. School’s owner was also accommodating in the pension. I got very bored there since I wasn’t used to residential life. I called the student inspector and told him that I got sick for having to eat meals made of pork meat as an excuse for requesting my replacement. So, the inspector sent me to a Catholic school in Munich, called Ettal. At this place, there was a monastery named Kloster Ettal, a Catholic school under the administration of the monastery, a hotel, a high school and a beer factory. A room was reserved for me in Hotel Ludwigder. During school hours, I was passively participating in the science lessons of senior classes. There was no Turkish but me. We became friends with the son of Provincial Police Chief, Sepp Henlein. Despite being illegal, I recall picking up a mountain flower called Enzian, which grew in Alps and was under protection, with him. It was used in production of liquors to give them odour. Ettal and its environs are a region famous for its natural beauty, surrounded with forests and mountains. This place is very well known for its mountain tours and is a destination for the wealthy European families to rest. Thus, I not only had the opportunity to meet up with new people and learn German very well, but also spent very good time. One day I met with Sumerbank’s student inspector who came without notice. He was there to see how I was doing and my level of language. After a short talk, he must have had the opinion that I knew German well enough that he ordered me to go immediately to Hannover Technical University to start my chemistry education and then, he left. While I was preparing to leave Ettal, I heard the news of grand leader Atatürk’s death, for which I felt deeply sorry and cried. I went to Hannover city and enrolled in Teknische Hochshule. I checked out from the hotel and settled in a teacher family living near the school as a pensioner. Þükrü Topsakal, Orhan Alp, Fevzi Özil, Galip Nural, Oðuz Babaoðlu, Enver Ak, Feridun and Yekta Onursal brothers were also at the same school for their education. After a while, Ýhsan Mocan and Munip Emil came to Hannover to study for their postgraduate’s degree as well. Chemistry education in this city was considered very important since the university’s chemistry professor was a well known professor called Biltz. Professor Geilman was in charge of the mineralogy department. There was an assistant called Klotofski, who was deeply imbued with Nazism. During a mineralogy exam, I was analyzing the sample this assistant gave me. The sample was a white colored substance resembling sugar crystals. I was to examine its crystal structure under a microscope and to determine whether it was viscous by touching it to my tongue. When I did that it tasted very acrid, so I washed my mouth and tongue with carbonated water just in case. After the chemical analysis, I determined that the sample given to me was a chemical substance called KCN (Potassium Cyanide), which could cause sudden deaths in suicides even with small amounts due to its strong toxic. Immediately I ran to the assistant. When I asked him what the sample he gave me was, he got mad and said “you should have found that for yourself”. I told him that it was KCN, and that I was going to make complaints against him to the professor. He was scared to death, and said “this is not possible, somebody must have changed its place so I mistakenly gave it to you”. Then, I told him that I had washed my mouth repeatedly after I touched it with my tongue, so he calmed down. In the winter-summer semester of 1939, we decided to take advantage of holiday and go to Turkey with Orhan ALP. We went to the Kostence port in Romania by train through Berlin-Dresden, Katowice-Bucharest. From Kostence, we arrived at Istanbul via a steamship. The cost of the trip together with steamship was DM 125 in total. In the steamship, we bumped into my cousin Ali ULUBAY at that time studying in London. Meanwhile, a porter who knew Turkish came next to me and asked to carry my bag in the short distance between the station and the port. The porter must have been a gypsy because he wasn’t glad despite me giving all coins in my pocket. We departed from the Kostence Port for Istanbul via the Transylvanian steamship. At night the surrounding was illuminated by moonlight. On each side of the steamship, dolphins followed us all the way to the Bosphorus. The same night, we departed for Konya from Haydarpasha Station. Ali stayed in Konya, I went on to Beysehir. The house I was born in Beysehir was on the edge of a lake. My holiday went by nice and quickly as I swam in the lake, went to fishing and visited my relatives. As I was preparing to get back to Germany, World War Two broke out. Sumerbank called all its students studying in Germany back to Turkey, and gathered us all in Sumerbank’s headquarters in Ankara. My cousin Ali ULUBAY went to England since there was no drawback in going there. Sumerbank wanted to send those studying in Germany to the United States. If not, they offered us to go to Istanbul Technical University. But since the students were insistent on studying in Germany, they asked us to wait. Then they announced that they would send us to Germany when conditions were favorable. In the meantime, students suggested interning in factories of Sumerbank. I and 16 more friends were sent to the newly established Karabuk Iron and Steel Factory, and the others to the Bursa Merinos and Izmit Paper factories. It was the second half of 1939. Karabuk Iron and Steel factories were being established by the British Brasart company. When we arrived at Karabuk, the coke factory and a blast furnace were operating, the steel foundry and the rolling mill were being installed. Me, Faruk Göknil, Yekta ÜLGEN and Arif ULU, who were sent to Germany for chemistry education, were assigned for internships in chemistry laboratory. In the beginning, we- interns- did not have work to do. I told that I knew how to do chemistry analysis. Others did not, and continued their internships without any responsibility. Exploiting this information, chief of laboratory wanted me to conduct analysis until late night, including Saturdays and Sundays. The rest were leaving at 17.00, and were not working at weekends. I offered the chief of laboratory that I left at 17.00 just like the others. Although he rejected my suggestion, I left the work place at 17.00. The chief must have had a complaint about this to his superiors since the English site manager called me later. So I explained him the situation. He recognized my argument and asked me to work only on Saturdays until 13.00. I accepted his request and thanked him. During their operations in Karabuk, the British were acting as if they had been in a British colony. They wrote “Turks are not allowed” to the door of a British club they established. We, 16 friends studying in Germany, got very upset about this. All breakfasts and meals were eaten in the same room. We chose Edirne frequenter Ýzzet Pasha’s son and our eldest member Süheyl Furgacý as our leader against such behavior of the British. We’d decided to boycott their behaviors. We used to do physical exercises each day before breakfast. We had a separate table at the dining hall. All of us started to gather around it and sit only when our chosen leader would say so. The British complained our behaviors to Sumerbank and accused us of being Nazis. At that time, lots of imprisoned workers were being employed in Karabuk Iron and Steel Factory. We still don’t know what our friend Hasan ERTURCU told him but we could hardy save him from the hands of a strapping one of them, from being thrown into an iron pot just out of blast furnace. After having stayed in Karabük until December of 1939, the situation between Turkey and Germany must have been clarified since we were sent back to Germany. They warned us to carry on our education in Munich due to its high security against air attacks. Yet since we couldn’t find any place in Munich University, I decided to continue my education in Hannover University. After a while, Turkish Embassy informed us to carry on our education in one of the eastern universities of Germany, because Hannover would have frequent attacks from allied forces due to its being an industrial city. I decided to continue my education in Berlin. I can’t help but tell some of the incidents I’ve been through there. - Due to war, it was obligatory to do blackout in houses and to go to the nearest shelter as soon as an aerial attack siren was heard. At first we didn’t take aerial attacks seriously; we used to watch from balcony the falling pieces of the reconnaissance aircrafts that managed to come as far as Berlin, after being spotted by projectors and hit by antiaircraft bullets. As the days went by, however, the situation changed and allied aircrafts caused sirens to be activated every night at 01.00 so that they would instigate social unrest and decrease manpower. On the other hand, heavy bomber aircrafts could not reach Berlin. Ever increasing intensity of aerial attacks and the defeat of German army in Stalingrad/Russia meant that I had to finish my education as soon as possible and return to my country. Thus, I was working until 22.00 at night and was the first to arrive at school in the mornings. During such heavy work schedule, I neglected asking for residence permission from authorities. That’s why I got an invitation from the Gestapo’s (Secret State Police) headquarters in Alexander Platz. I didn’t know why I was invited. Did I unintentionally commit a political crime? My horror was extreme. I informed this situation to Sumerbank’s student inspector Necip Duru Tesal (one of Atatürk’s assistants Nuri Conker’s son-in-law), and went to the police station. I could not recall his name but Dr. Jurist’s name was in this invitation. When I went to his office, I was asked if I had an ID and residence permit. At that moment I realized the situation and got very afraid, because the fate of those in the hands of Gestapo was a mystery. After having realized my fault, my response had been that I was in Germany on account of Sumerbank – a state institution in Turkey – for my chemistry education, that my aim was...... |