The three young girls who have purportedly fled to Syria

Yes quite Felice you get checked in entry but unless I am wrong about our lack of exit controls, the "authorities" would have to rely on the airline instructing the ground staff to alert them. Or the Turkish immigration authorities.
If you drive to Ireland and back by car your identity does not get checked in either direction. They check your car reg and number of passengers and wave you through. Our borders are very lightly controlled.
Good Mishap I'm glad. Perils of posting.
Do we actually know who paid for the flights?
I do feel terribly sorry for the parents.

Perhaps i expressed it wrongly I just wanted to show that even 14 years ago some countries were checking on unaccompanied children. DD travelled from the UK to Portugal at the age of 8 with her Autistic 16 year old brother.
Not a word at either end, they had letters with them but just walked through at each end.
Under the present conditions I am very surprised the UK authorities didn't pick up something, but then again they seem to be more concerned with who is entering than leaving, I cannot remember the last time i had even my passport checked at a ferry terminal on leaving the UK.
I regularily enter but never leave.!!!!!

Friends' children regularly joined them abroad during their school holidays. I don't think they were accompanied or escorted to the flight after a certain age, 14 I think.

My worry if they are eventually found and brought home is what they might do "instead". They cannot just pretend it was all a big mistake and go back to being normal girls (whatever normal is in their weird world).

Why should we expect other countries to carry out checks just incase some idiot girls want to become ISIS brides. If they cannot bear to live in a civilised, western country and have the freedoms that they clearly don't want, well so be it. But there is no way they should be rescued when the proverbial sh*t hits the fan and they realise that its all been a big mistake.

Turkey isnt carrying out checks, the girls have arrived in Turkey with passports and of their own free will.

As felice says, young people including females can travel all over the place, unaccompanied.

Why should Turkey be the one to carry out these checks, if the girls' own country of origin hasn't bothered to do so?

Loopylou the people who go to join IS don't go direct to Syria: as you said, it is not a holiday destination. They go via Turkey, along with thousands of holiday makers, and people who have second homes there etc. The jihadists then get them across the border into Syria. The weather has been awful in Turkey, there was heavy snow on the roads, so the hope is that the girls will still be stuck in Turkey and unable to get smuggled into Syria, although the worry is that they are being held somewhere by whoever has lured them over. I also wonder, when it is found that they are middle class girls, if they be of more use as kidnap hostages to IS? This will open up a whole new horror.

My children like most Xpat children regularily travelled unaccompanied around Europe.
The only time questions were asked was when DD age 15 was going to visit family friends in Morroco.
No questions at Heathrow, she had flown there to catch a connecting flight to Casablanca, no questions here either.
Her arrival in Casa was very different, met at the aircraft by immigration officials and a female police officer, our friends were taken into a room and questioned, luckily we had been warned of this by other freinds and had provided notarised letters for our friends copies of which our DD also had.
Friends cousin who was with them got a real grilling as he was not named on the documents.
That was 14 years ago, if Morroco can carry out these checks when a child has full permission of parents to travel, surely Turkey should also be doing so.

Good point Gill, yet some photos of their families show the women wearing traditional dress.
I certainly think any youngsters heading for Syria should be questioned-if only to ascertain their intentions. These were British girls leaving the UK, not Syrian girls heading for home, and I would also query Syria as a holiday destination when travel there is not advised, by the Foreign Office.
Would they have needed visas?

Isnt it strange that a lot of us know so little about people that are living in Britain with us.

But do we know that these girls are from oppressive male dominated households? The photographs show them wearing western clothes, and they were all well educated and high achievers with professional careers ahead. This rather blows away the apologists who blame lack of social mobilty/poverty/islamophobic practices for young people being attracted to the so called glamour of IS. These girls would seem to have good opportunities and good education and certainly access to the internet and social media. They also had funds to buy air tickets. They may be naive but they are not, I think, poor little girls who have been kept shut away by their male relatives. One of the girls had stolen her older sister's passport. I also don't think it is the fault of the border agency for letting them through, they had passports, they had tickets, what are they to do? Stop every asian teenager going on holiday and question them? What about white teenagers? I honestly feel heart sorry for their families, and hope they get their girls back home safely, but I don't think this is the fault of UK government/border agency/dept of education or whoever else is being blamed. They are teenagers and remember; they know everything.

Maybe they seek what to them is an 'exciting' life in contrast to the dictated norm for many Muslim (and other) females of chosen suitor, marriage and babies?

Your last point is very apt TerriBull. My (muslim) boys relied wholly on muslim social media when they arrived and were very shocked at the discrepancies in reporting when they started to get their news from a variety of sources. It took them a long time to begin to trust western news services.

Regarding The Spanish Civil War, whilst that produced many appalling atrocities, I would question whether those that went to help the effort there would have reveled in "joining in" such horrors. I imagine 1930s media would have been somewhat limited in any case, so those seeking to go to Spain may not have known just what they were getting into. No excuses with this lot! Although a Muslim male commentator who I was listening to at the week-end, made the point that possibly some of these girls don't read the press where they would find out about "a woman's lot" under the current regime, but take their information from social media sites where what they are being sold is packaged somewhat differently.

According to the news this morning, one of the 15 year olds took her 17 year old sister's passport. I imagine the fact the younger girls were traveling with a 17 year old allowed them to get through passport control.

Watching the families being interviewed, I felt these girls were being talked about as though they were much younger than their chronological age. "You are our baby" repeated by one of the older sisters, along with family members holding teddy bears or in one case the pyjamas of the missing 15 year old. Most 15 year old girls aren't 100% honest with their parents, believing their parents won't accept they're growing up. Well, these 3 have struck out for what they (wrongly) believe is some kind of freedom. This wasn't planned overnight was it.

I share the bewilderment expressed by other posters about how any 15 year old girl can see beheadings, the rape of women and children and the advice to Isis fighters that they can take a bride from age 11/14 but also from age 7 upwards if the girl is considered ready. How can any of this seem either exciting or right.

The Bible, and Christian history, has many examples of killing those who hold a different view.
It's not hard to imagine people who believe that they are the 'chosen ones' of God and that they are being 'told by God' to slaughter those who are not in agreement with them.
For young people who have led a very limited life, not allowed to take a real part in the Western communities they inhabit, ISIS could seem like a worthwhile cause to devote themselves to.

Heavens no JessM - I was not suggesting that at all!

It reminds me just a little of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" where the teacher's fervour for the Civil War in Spain causes the most impressionable of her class to run away to join in and be killed.

Kids from all kinds of homes sometimes do stupid things. At that age they have not developed an ability to work out what is risky and what is not.
I find your post odd Mishap - you seem to be suggesting that British Asian people do not love their children.

I too find it incomprehensible that they were allowed to pass through the airport unchallenged, given their ages and the fact that they were flying to Turkey unaccompanied. I have absolutely no faith that any procedures have been implemented to apprehend susceptible young people whilst they are going through the checking in, security points and passport control. Unbelievable!

I accept that their grooming was undoubtedly covert and the parents had no knowledge, teenagers per se aren't always honest and open with their parents about what they get up to. The girls are reputedly Grade A students, although I appreciate common sense and brains don't go hand in hand, but I wonder what as females they would expect to get out of a life where women are expected to exist as drudges and baby making facilitators only. ISIS education plans for girls is to be very limited.

It also alarms me that they can be so desensitised to the sufferings that ISIS inflict on their fellow human beings. Allegedly some of the foreign Jihadi women, who have risen to a position of authority, have been very cruel to captive women and children such as the Yazids as well as inflicting all manner of harsh punishments on the indigenous women of Syria who don't toe the official line. Not to mention the horrific barbarism carried out by their male counterparts which some of the newly arrived foreign females in Syria seem to delight in. I can't begin to understand their warped mindset.

There really is a huge cultural difference in the way muslim children (of either gender) may be brought up compared to western children. My two foster sons were completely naive in so many ways and never, never had what we would describe as normal conversations with their father. In fact there was one evening here when their father was visiting when the eldest son shared his thoughts about something and he said that he had never had a conversation like that with his father before. Expressions of emotion may also look and sound very different too, so it's really hard to judge by our western standards.

Mishap - I thought that too. The sister of one, in particular, her tears didn't seem real. But then perhaps it is a cultural thing.

Silly little girls.

I suspect Anya that women are not allowed to discuss such things.
A colleague working with Muslim women staying in a womens refuge says that few of them would ever dream of having an opinion let alone discuss politics or religion. She struggles sometimes to even find out their basic medical history and many of these women are so suppressed that they suffer severe reprisals from husband/family /religious leaders if they express anything other than what their husbands and families want to hear.
If mothers can't actively contribute and direct their daughters' lives, then perhaps this is the result.
Certainly I'm not taken in by the fathers' pleas......

This is going to sound harsh, but I was really not sure about the families' grief - maybe it is a cultural thing, but somehow it did not ring true. I only heard them briefly, so maybe it is wrong to judge. It is hard to imagine that the subject was not discussed at home at all, and that there were not opportunities to set them on the right path, especially after a girl from the same school had done the same thing.

The extent of the brainwashing must be extraordinary for the girls to have seen these atrocities and to want to be identified with them, as others have said. It all beggars belief.