The family eventually travelled to Iraq via Syria.

Suzan Ibrahim, 31, a lawyer, and her husband Honar, 38, a graphic designer, arrived at Istanbul with their one-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. The parents were born in Sulaimaniya in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. They were planning to travel through Turkey to visit friends and family still living there.

We hold valid British passports," Mrs Ibrahim said. "When we arrived at the airport the immigration officials saw that [we] had written Kurdistan as our place of birth in our passports. We wanted to recognise that we are from Kurdistan, and the British government obviously didn't have any problem with that
But the Turkish officials put us all in a room where the lights were left on all night. The children couldn't sleep. The officials humiliated us, saying racist things about Kurds. We lost our tickets as well, and the airline refused to give us a refund."