Turkish intelligence tracked him down after he put the girl up for sale on the dark web, a hidden part of the internet used by criminals. The police posed as a potential buyer and found out the address. The raid followed a day later.
It is still unknown who the girl is. The ISIS gave her a different name. Her family is also still unknown. She is provisionally received by the Turkish child protection. A Yazidi organization tries to find out if her family is still alive.
“We know very little at the moment, but we fear terrible things have happened to her,” said Azad Baris, of the Jezidi Culture Foundation in Turkey. He thinks it is likely that her mother is also somewhere in Turkey. “We are trying to pressure the Turkish authorities to find her,” he said. Meanwhile, the foundation has distributed the girl’s photo in Yazidi networks in Iraq and worldwide. “We hope that someone recognizes her. But it is a difficult search, she was very young when IS kidnapped her.”
Failing to find her family, Baris wants to arrange for her to be admitted to a Yazidi family in Iraq or elsewhere. “She needs to know that she is not alone. That she has a community, that there are people who are there for her and want to take her back.”
Handel in jezidi’s
It is not the first time that kidnapped Yazidis have been found in Turkey. In 2017, two Yazidi children, a brother and sister, were freed. The children lived with an IS fighter in Kirsehir, a city near Ankara. He ran into the lamp when he tried to register the children for a residence permit. In recent years, at least ten kidnapped Yazidi women have been freed, says the Yazidi organization. Women have also previously been offered ‘for sale’ on the dark web, a method that IS has been using for some time to trade in Yazidis.
The Turkish authorities say they are actively hunting IS people hiding in the country. Especially recently, many dormant IS cells have been rolled up. During the month of February, the police arrested 165 ISIS people in various places in the country. This week there was another major police operation in Istanbul. Fifteen addresses in ten neighborhoods were raided at the same time. Eighteen IS’ers were arrested, sixteen of them from abroad. It is unknown how long they have been in Turkey.
Turkey as a refuge
The girl’s find shows that ISIS is still present in Turkey, says Baris. “It is no secret that many fighters came here after the fall of the caliphate. IS terrorists regard Turkey as a safe place. That is no secret from the world.” He thinks that the Turkish police have done too little for too long. “There are areas where these warriors roam free, where they have houses.
The Sincan neighborhood in Ankara, where the Yazidi girl was found, has been known for years as one of the areas where ISIS people are hiding, says investigative journalist Hale Goluntas. “Last year a Yazidi woman was also taken from an IS house there. We know that not only IS fighters but also IS sympathizers have Yezidi women in their house as their second or third wife.”
IS still active
There are around 3000 missing Yezidis. “Of course we don’t know how many of them are in Turkey,” Gonultas says. “But the fact that IS people in the middle of Ankara are trying to sell Yezidi women and children shows that IS is still active here too.”
With the latest rescue operation, the Turkish police shows that they take it seriously, says Gonultas. “This is a sign that Turkey is working to track down missing Yazidis.” The Turkish police have not responded to questions from the NOS.
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