FDD POLICY BRIEF
Erdogan Releases Another U.S. Hostage Ahead of Trump Meeting
by Aykan Erdemir and Merve Tahiroglu
May 31, 2019

Turkey on Wednesday night released Serkan Golge, a Turkish-American dual citizen imprisoned on dubious terrorism charges, hours after a phone call between President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The move comes as the Turkish president struggles to contain the country’s economic crisis ahead of a historic rerun of Istanbul’s mayoral election set for June 23. Golge, a NASA physicist, was one of the three U.S. citizens – in addition to three local employees of the U.S. mission in Turkey – held on frivolous charges of terrorism, coup plotting, and espionage in the wake of a failed coup attempt in 2016. READ MORE