On the evening of Dec. 22, 2016, social media accounts affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) shared a gruesome execution video, showing two Turkish-speaking soldiers being burned alive. The Turkish authorities were quick to restrict access to major social media sites to prevent the spread of the video.
Still, the two soldiers were soon identified as Sefter Tas and Fethi Sahin. Tas was already familiar to the public as the private whom IS militants had abducted on Sept. 1, 2015, in the Kilis region at the border with Syria, where he was doing his military service. Both his family and opposition parties had queried the government about his fate, but no one had managed to extract an answer. Eight months after his abduction, Tas had been featured in a Turkish-language online magazine published by IS. He was quoted as asking the Turkish authorities why no one was looking for him. The remarks suggested that the government had taken no action to rescue the soldier.