Seizing diplomatic missions and taking diplomats hostage is no ordinary event. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, however, has been doing its utmost to play down the seizure of the country’s consulate in Mosul on June 11 — by radical Sunni extremists on the day they took control of the city — and the hostage taking of 49 consulate workers including the consul general.

Naci Koru, Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, for example, argued on June 15 that the Turkish diplomats are “no hostages.” “We do not believe that [our diplomats] have been taken hostage,” he said. “If they were taken hostage, there would have been negotiations over the conditions to take them back. They are not asking for anything in return [for safely releasing the Turkish diplomats].”

Since the seizure of the US Embassy and the 444-day hostage crisis during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, this is the first time a diplomatic mission has been seized and such a large number of diplomatic personnel have been held against their free will. It has now been five days since 49 Turkish consulate workers were taken hostage by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), with no foreseeable end in sight.

Hasan Unal, head of the department of international relations at Atilim University, told Al-Monitor that if ISIS — the al-Qaeda spin-off group — has not actually taken the Turkish diplomats hostage, it could choose to release them without further delay. “This soft approach by the government even makes one wonder whether there is any conspiracy behind this tragedy,” he said.