Fatih Yildiz never thought that one day he would have to plead with al-Qaida commander for the lives of his two sons. After a frantic week of searching for them in the blasted ruins of northern Syria, the retired Turkish government official was at his wit's end.
"I swear, if I had had a gun I would have shot that man," Yildiz told the Guardian.
The problem was that the commander – a fellow Turk from Trabzon on the Black Sea coast – could not understand why he wanted his sons back.