Physicist Serkan Golge, on his release from prison in Turkey

On 29 May a guard at İskenderun prison in southern Turkey approached a closet-size cell and told the lone inmate to pack his things. Twenty minutes later, Serkan Golge was on his way out of captivity. It was an abrupt and unexpected end to nearly three years of incarceration for the physicist and dual US–Turkish citizen.

Golge, 39, was arrested in July 2016 in the aftermath of a failed overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government. Over the course of his imprisonment, Golge lost his job as a NASA contractor, sold his house in Houston, and used most of his savings to pay lawyers and support his family, who stayed in Turkey throughout his detention. “You’re a physicist one day, and the next you’re in an isolation cell,” he says in a phone interview with Physics Today.

Now, two weeks after his release, Golge, along with his wife and children, is staying at his parents’ home in the southern Turkish city of Antakya. He is still acclimating to life outside what he estimates was a 40-square-foot cell. As a condition of his release, he has to check in four days a week at a local police station.

Golge’s detainment came in the wake of the attempted coup on 15 July 2016, which Erdoğan claimed was the work of a terrorist organization supported by the CIA. By blaming the US and declaring a state of emergency that largely suspended civilian rights, Erdoğan put American citizens in Turkey at risk.

Golge, who was visiting his parents at the time, was particularly vulnerable because of his close connections to both countries. He says that a relative in Turkey with a history of disagreements with his immediate family called the police to report a suspicious US citizen. Because of the emergency declaration and a policy of not recognizing dual citizenship, the Turkish government was able to detain Golge based on his alleged possession of a symbol of membership in the terrorist organization: a $1 bill.

In February 2018 a Turkish court, apparently satisfied with evidence that included little beyond the dollar note and a NASA ID card, sentenced Golge to seven and a half years in prison for being a member of a terrorist organization. The US State Department said it was “deeply concerned” by a conviction of a US citizen “without credible evidence.” Scientific societies and human rights organizations condemned the decision. An appeals court later reduced the sentence to five years. Golge says he spent most of his detainment in solitary confinement. He was permitted to see his family once a week and to touch them once a month.

Golge says that he should have been released in March, having completed 33 months of time served for the five-year sentence. But it was still a surprise to him when the guard told him to gather his belongings. President Trump had spoken to Erdoğan earlier that day, but neither Trump nor the State Department has provided any details about what led to Golge’s release.

Golge is out of prison, but many challenges remain for him, his wife, and his two sons, including a three-year-old who was an infant at the time of the arrest. Golge can’t stray far from his parents’ home during his probation, and his Turkish bank accounts remain frozen. “I’m trying to find money to support my life,” he says. He hopes to return to Houston once the probationary period ends, which, according to statute, should be in April 2020.

In the meantime, Golge is pursuing a claim of unlawful detention with the European Court of Human Rights. “Prosecutors should have to present credible evidence in criminal cases,” he says. “They don’t do that in Turkey right now.” He hopes to win some “compensation for what I lost,” including the salary he would have received from his job at NASA.

Golge received a BS in physics from Fatih University in Istanbul before earning his master’s and PhD at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Trained as an accelerator physicist, Golge designed a positron accelerator as part of the PEPPo experiment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. In 2013 he became a contractor for NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where he modeled cosmic-ray flux in the solar system as part of an effort to study the health implications for future crewed missions to Mars.

Golge says he hasn’t yet talked to NASA or the contractor that employed him, the University of Houston, and he hasn’t read any physics literature in the past three years. Still, he hopes he can return to the job he had before his life was upended. “I loved my job. I was happy to be part of something as important as a Mars mission,” he says. “I would love to be a part of that again, if I’m given the opportunity.”