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Hacibayram, a ramshackle neighborhood in the heart of Ankara’s tourist district, has morphed into an recruiting hub for the Islamic State over the past year. Locals say that up to 100 residents have gone to fight for the group in Syria. Ceylan Yeginsu, a Times correspondent who is from Turkey, visited Hacibayram to report on recruitment efforts and to find out why young boys from the area enlist as fighters for the group, often referred to as ISIS. Here she describes how she got her front-page story.

When I asked the taxi driver to take me to the neighborhood of Hacibayram, he crunched his forehead — not out of confusion, but out of evident concern that I was going to a dangerous part of town.

I had to explain that I was a journalist and had an appointment with a local resident before he agreed to take me there. During the 10-minute drive, he warned me about drug addicts, criminals and rapists and insisted that Hacibayram was no place for a woman to travel alone.

I asked him if he thought the high crime rate in the neighborhood was related in any way to the Islamic State’s recruitment there, but he knew nothing about the group and questioned my assertion.

“Ankara is Turkey’s most secure city. How can terrorists recruit under the governments nose?” he said.

When we reached the skirt of the hill leading to the neighborhood, I got out. I didn’t want to attract attention in a bright yellow cab, but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Each person I passed on my way up stared at me with such unwelcoming intensity that it was hard to believe I was still in my own hospitable country.

Arif Akbas, the elected neighborhood headman who oversees local affairs, was my only point of contact for the story when I arrived. He had spoken to the local press about the government’s inaction regarding the recruits in the neighborhood and told me, over the phone, that he would connect me with some of the families whose children had joined the militants and with recruits who had returned from Syria to Turkey. When we met, however, he told me that no one was willing to speak to me.

I quickly realized that I would need to find a local male to help me navigate the neighborhood and get access to the families and potentially the recruits. After eight cups of tea with local residents who came in and out of the headman’s office, I managed to persuade a man to take me around, but he had one condition: That I wouldn’t ask anyone about the Islamic State. I agreed.

As we walked through the ramshackle neighborhood, every other person came up to my guide and inquired about me. He told them I was a journalist who had come to do research about a school that the municipality recently demolished as part of an urban renewal project. I found out later that the lack of schools in the area played a big role in attracting children to the militant group.

The scene I wrote about in the article — young boys who attacked a young Syrian girl who walked past on the street — unfolded right in front of me. There was a market close by and the owner happened to be the father of one of the boys who had told me he had access to real weapons in his house. I couldn’t help but ask him about it.

He invited us in and started lecturing us about the greatness of the group’s ideology and about how much the Turkish government had to learn from the militant group. He wouldn’t accept any questions from me because I was a woman. Although I am Muslim, he called me a “fraud” because I wasn’t covered.

When we left I realized that this man would be a way in. I briefed my guide on questions to ask him, and the next day we came back. I dressed all in black and wore a head scarf. The man spoke with us for three hours.

During the meeting the phone rang. Someone had seen me in the neighborhood and wanted to know what I was up to. “Don’t worry it’s a stupid American newspaper. I’m just badmouthing the Americans, I’m not telling her anything,” the market owner said unapologetically.

Our meeting was interrupted again a few minutes later when a man with a long, coarse beard came into the market and left a key on the stall. I found out later that the key was for an underground mosque used for the group’s recruitment. The man didn’t say anything, but his look was so threatening that it caused me to look reflexively down at my feet. My guide told me later that he had been the man on the phone and was one of the chief recruiters in the area.

I realized I had attracted too much attention in the neighborhood over two days and by instinct knew not to go back a third day. Although I was there alone, I had full support from my bureau chief, Tim Arango, and other colleagues in Turkey who were in close contact each day. When it came to interviewing the recruits, I arranged to speak with them outside of the district, which was more comfortable for them as well. The greatest challenge was verifying the stories. I went through the story of Can, (a 27-year-old from Ankara who joined the militants and took part in a shooting and a public execution and buried a man alive,) with a colleague from the paper who is familiar with the logistics of recruitment from Turkey and his account added up, but it wasn’t until I saw video and images of his time at the camp that I felt confident enough to put his story into print.