Declassified telegrams from the State Department indicated that in discussions between the US embassy and Vahap Aşıroğlu, Turkish Director of Consular Affairs, the latter believed Hayes would probably be released from prison on parole in October 1978, which in practice meant that a local prosecutor would declare him persona non grata and expel him from the country. Hayes escaped from İmralı on October 2, 1975, taking a rowboat at night to Bandirma, blending in with locals, and then heading westbound across the border to Greece. After over two weeks of detention and interrogation to determine whether he possessed any useful intelligence about Turkey's military, he was deported from Thessaloniki to Frankfurt on October 20; after interrogation by US authorities in Frankfurt, Hayes spent several days in Amsterdam, and then returned to the United States.