I would have liked to embrace Aysun very much during Eid, but she could not come to visit us and kiss our hands [a Turkish tradition]. It was a very difficult Eid for her mother. She can only tolerate her absence with tranquilizers,” Özcan Akbay, father of Aysun Akbay, said with disappointment. Aysun Akbay, 24, had been working for the company that owns the Horizon I for two months and had been assigned as fourth officer on the vessel, which was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden on July 9 with 23 Turkish crew members on board. The ship was en route to Jordan from Saudi Arabia. Pirates demanded ransom to release the ship and hostages.
It has been almost three months since the seizure of the ship, but negotiations with the pirates have not yet yielded any results that would make the release of the hostages possible. Pirates usually release ships after a ransom payment, with negotiations often taking months.
Nilgün Yamaner, a lawyer for Horizon Shipping, which owns the hijacked ship, said the negotiations with the pirates entered a good course due to the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr last week. Indicating that the figures mentioned in kidnapping negotiations generally come to a reasonable level after two months, she said it could even take six months to conclude the negotiations.
Yamaner refused to mention any figure the company was offering to the pirates, noting that this could influence the course of the negotiations. After a phone call with his daughter on Eid, Akbay's father said last week the pirates had demanded $2 million from the company that owns the ship but that the company was willing to pay $1.5 million.
“$2 million and $1.5 million are very close figures. I wish there was another way to rescue those on board the ship. There was no chance of a rescue operation, either. So I think there is no need to wait for more. The company should conclude the negotiations, paying the ransom demanded by the pirates as soon as possible,” the father said.
Ruling out conflicting reports about the amount of the ransom, Yamaner said the pirates were trying to manipulate the public and create pressure on the company by letting hostages have contact with their families and leaking the ransom negotiation details.
