Turkish hostages freed; questions still linger

Associated Press

ANKARA, TURKEY

Turkish authorities say they have freed 49 hostages from one of the world’s most-ruthless militant groups without firing a shot, paying a ransom or offering a quid pro quo.

But as the well-dressed men and women captured by the Islamic State group more than three months ago clasped their families Saturday on the tarmac of the Turkish capital’s airport, experts had doubts about the government’s story.

The official explanation “sounds a bit too good to be true,” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat who chairs the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies. “There are some very legitimate and unanswered questions about how this happened.”

The hostages — whose number included two small children — were seized from the Turkish Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul after the Islamic State group overran the city June 11. How they traveled from Mosul to Turkey and why the Islamic State would relinquish such a useful bargaining chip remained unclear.

“I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t been told the full story,” said Aaron Stein, an associate fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute who has studied Turkey’s security policy.

Turkish leaders gave only the broadest outlines of their rescue Saturday. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the hostages’ release was the work of the country’s intelligence agency rather than a special forces operation.

“After intense efforts that lasted days and weeks, in the early hours our citizens were handed over to us and we brought them back,” Davutoglu said.

One former hostage, Alptekin Esirgun, told the state-run Anadolou Agency that militants held a gun to Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz’s head and tried to force him to make a statement.

Yilmaz told NTV television late Saturday that the hostages were forced to watch videos of the beheadings of other hostages. Two U.S. journalists and a British aid worker were recently beheaded by the Islamic State group.