[7] In 1932, Alptekin was sent to Nanjing and was appointed as an advisor in the Republic of China's Defense Ministry's Border Affairs Department.

[12] Ma Fuxliang, Isa Alptekin, Wang Zengshan, Xue Wenbo, and Lin Zhongming all went to Egypt to denounce Japan in front of the Arab and Islamic worlds.

Instead, Ma fled in an American CIA airplane with several million dollars in gold as the Chinese Red Army approached Qinghai.

Alptekin fled the Communist takeover of Xinjiang through the Himalayas, reaching Ladakh in Indian-controlled Kashmir and going into exile in Turkey.

In 1954, he and Muhammad Amin Bughra went to Taiwan to try to persuade the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China to drop its claims to Xinjiang.

When he died there in 1995, over a thousand people[33] allegedly attended his funeral, and he was buried in Topkapı Cemetery, next to the mausoleums of two former Turkish leaders, Adnan Menderes and Turgut Özal.

[34][35] In 1995, a park was dedicated to Alptekin in the Blue Mosque section in Istanbul, along with a memorial for martyrs of the late East Turkestan Independence Movement.

The high-profile nature of the dedication, including the attendance of the Turkish President, Prime Minister, chairman of parliament, and others, enraged China.

It denounced Turkey for meddling in its 'internal affairs', and the Turkish state department requested the closing of the park, but domestic constituencies refused.