Meanwhile in Iraq what happened to Yazidi community was the same.
At the beginning of August 2014, barely anyone had heard of the city of Sinjar: then ISIS arrived, and the world became all too familiar with the city and the tragedy which unfolded there.
Eighteen months later, photographer Cengiz Yar became one of the first civilians to arrive in the devastated city after ISIS were chased from the area by Kurdish forces and Iraqi army.
What he discovered was a city where many still fear to tread, terrified of buildings rumoured to be laced with booby traps, pockmarked by bullet holes and surrounded by mass graves.
His pictures - taken over the course of two visits, once in November when Sinjar was liberated, and again a month later - capture the utter desolation of what remains.
Cengiz Yar in a report For Mailonline says: "They (ISIS) killed old ladies because they could not use them for sex slaves".