36 TheEconomistAugust 17th 2019
1S
uheyla remembersthe day clearly. She
had invited her children for dinner and
was preparing her youngest son’s favourite
stew. He never showed up. Neither did her
four daughters. When none of them picked
up the phone, she and her husband Lutfu
understood what was happening. They
rushed to a police station to ask the au-
thorities to track down their children: they
were headed south. A month later one of
Suheyla’s daughters called. She and her sib-
lings, the youngest 18 and the eldest 27,
along with her brother’s wife and their in-
fant son, had smuggled themselves into
Syria and joined Islamic State (is).
That was in late 2015. Today, three of the
daughters are behind bars in Baghdad, hav-
ing been captured by Iraqi forces two years
ago. The fourth died in jail, two months
after giving birth to a boy. Their brother, Ya-
sin, has not been heard from in two years.
Earlier this summer, Suheyla and Lutfu
(not their real names) were united with two
of their grandchildren, aged one and two,
who were repatriated from Iraq. The tod-
dlers were ill when they arrived. One was
covered with sores, having caught scabiesin the squalid prison in which he was born.
He survived on his aunt’s milk.
At their apartment in Esenler, a conser-
vative district in Istanbul, Suheyla fights
back tears as she flicks through photos of
her daughters on her phone. Like their par-
ents, they were good, devout Muslims, she
recalls, but they were not zealots. Their
parents do not know how they were radi-
calised, but in a month they had trans-
formed beyond recognition. Her daughters
swapped their headscarves for shapeless
black niqabs. Her son grew a beard. They
began to praise the murderous caliphate
that ishad founded in parts of Iraq and Syr-ia. “You could not reason with them,” says
Lutfu. “It was like a disease.”
Since the war in Syria began, at least
2,000 Turks are said to have joined the
thousands of foreign jihadists who poured
across Turkey’s southern border to fight
alongside isor al-Qaeda. Hundreds died on
the battlefield. Some carried out suicide
bombings at home. During a terrifying
spell between 2015 and early 2017, at least
300 people died in a dozen isattacks across
Turkey. Most of the bombers were Turks.
According to officials, about 500 home-
grown issupporters are in prison in Tur-
key, in addition to some 700 foreigners.
Hundreds of Turkish women who joined
the group, including Suheyla’s daughters,
are held in Baghdad. Some fighters sneaked
into Turkey as the caliphate began to col-
lapse. Turkey must now come to grips with
those militants, both domestic and for-
eign, who have returned from Iraq and Syr-
ia, and those planning to do so.
Belatedly, the country has begun to fo-
cus on prevention and rehabilitation. The
government has organised seminars for
Turkish and refugee children, to inoculate
them against ispropaganda. The religious
affairs directorate, which oversees the
teaching of Islam, has trained 70 prison
chaplains to work with religious extrem-
ists. The programme has enjoyed a mea-
sure of success. A pair of young sisters who
pledged allegiance to is, and then refused
to be tried by a Turkish court, recanted after
sessions with a female chaplain. They were
released. Prison officials say they make aTu r ke yWhen a caliphate collapses
ISTANBUL
Many people who tried to build an Islamic State in Syria are coming to TurkeyEurope
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