ISTANBUL – Police detained a Turkish Airlines employee on Tuesday after he released a woman he had been holding hostage with a gun at the company’s headquarters, a company spokeswoman told Reuters.
Police, including special forces teams, had set up a security cordon around the area where the man had been holding a female employee of Turkish Airlines.
“The matter is closed. The man was persuaded (to release the woman),” the spokeswoman said.
State-run Anatolian news agency said the man and the woman had been in a relationship and that he had carried out the hostage-taking after she left him and rejected his subsequent advances.
It said the woman was shaken but unharmed.
Earlier it said the man had first detained three people at a canteen in the building’s basement before releasing two of them, saying he wanted to talk to the woman.