A Turkish army officer who was abducted on Jan. 1 while on duty along the Turkish-Syrian border has been brought back to Turkey, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Monday.
Davutoğlu made the announcement via his official Twitter account and said the sergeant was brought back thanks to the "successful operation of the National Intelligence Organization [MİT]."
In a televised address on state-run TRT, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç named the recovered Turkish army officer as Özgür Örs and said he was now safe inside Turkey.
Arınç said an investigation into the abduction would now begin and that details about who or which group was behind the incident would be revealed later.
According to the Turkish Army, the sergeant was investigating a smuggling case on the Syrian border. A search operation was launched when contact was lost with him.
Turkish media speculated that the militant Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was behind the abduction, however Brigadier Gen. Ertuğrul Gazi Özkürkçü said earlier on Monday that there was no clear intelligence about who or which group was exactly behind it.
Last June, 49 Turkish Consulate employees including senior diplomats were seized by ISIS in the Iraqi city of Mosul, sparking months of efforts to secure their release. They were eventually freed unharmed in September.
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