Turkish hostages freed from IS, questions persist

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 Mosul after the IS group overran the city.