NASA scientist jailed in Turkey for 3 years says case against him was 'garbage'

CAIRO – 10 July 2020: Serkan Golge, a NASA scientist and American citizen, has described evidence that charged him with committing “terrorist activities” in Turkey as “garbage!”

 

As Golge and his family were packing up to go to the airport and commence their trip home to Houston in June 2016 following a coup attempt that erupted in Turkey against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, officers arrived at Golge’s parents’ house to arrest him.

 

Erdogan’s government has blamed the coup attempt on Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania. Soon after the coup, pro-government Turkish media outlets began accusing the American government of being behind the plot.

 

After his arrest, authorities searched his house multiple times and found a single U.S. dollar bill in a bedroom the couple was not staying in, and declared that this was a sign Golge was a Gülenist and had been involved in the coup attempt. 

 

Finally, after nearly two years of being incarcerated, a trial where most of the “evidence” against him, like the fact that he used a particular bank in Turkey and that he had a NASA ID badge, was ultimately used to convict him of being involved in the uprising. He was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison in February 2018, Houstonia Magazine reported.

 

“You fit the profile,” he recalled his lawyer telling him at one point. “It does not really matter if you are innocent or not. They won’t release you.”

 

After 14 days, Mr. Golge appeared before a judge who told him the police had found an American dollar bill in his parent’s house, which the Turkish authorities alleged was a badge of membership to the Gulen movement, by then designated a terrorist group, a report by the New York Times said.

 

Mr. Golge was held in a general prison in southern Turkey, alongside high-ranking military officers, judges and prosecutors, some of whom told him that they were being held without any evidence at all.

 

During his interview, Mr. Gole said he was sent to a prison in the town of Iskenderun, where 32 men were crammed in a cell made for eight. He slept on a blanket on the floor and soon fell ill with bronchitis.

 

Within a month, he was moved to solitary confinement and faced charges of overthrowing the government and the constitution, which carried a life sentence, and a charge of belonging to a terrorist organization, which carried a 15-year sentence.

 

“It is a very small room — it barely sees the sunlight, and the guards took me out only one hour a day,” he said. “And I stayed in that room, in that small single cell, for three years.”

 

“A one dollar bill, an anonymous tip, a bank account? How is this terrorism?” Mr. Golge asked. “Nobody could explain, but I think this is how laws and courts still work in Turkey.”

 

He said he sensed the Turkish judges knew the case against him was “garbage” but were compelled to drag out the process. “I felt they were scared of something,” he added.

 

He was released from prison in May 2019 and in April this year was cleared to leave the country. But then he was hospitalized with stomach ulcers, and the coronavirus pandemic grounded flights.

 

President Donald Trump stated last November that he had secured Golge’s full release from Turkey through his dealings with Erdogan, but Golge and his family remained in Turkey, unable to return to the United States.

 

Until this week, that is, when the family took a commercial flight and landed on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., as the New York Times reported.