Story highlights Families say the doctors and students went to Turkey to help refugees "They have been cheated, brainwashed," parliamentarian Mehmet Ali Ediboglu says The group is made up of Britons, Sudanese, an American and a Canadian

The group of 11 people includes seven Britons, an American, a Canadian and two Sudanese, Turkish lawmaker Mehmet Ali Ediboglu told CNN on Sunday.

Ediboglu, an opposition lawmaker, told The Observer that he had spoken with the students' families, who were convinced their loved ones wanted to work for ISIS, and were asking him for help tracking them down in neighboring Syria.

"They have been cheated, brainwashed. That is what I, and their relatives, think," Ediboglu said, according to the newspaper.

But he also stressed that the group did not travel with the intention of joining the battle.

"Let's not forget about the fact that they are doctors," he told The Observer. "They went there to help, not to fight."

In a joint statement, the students' and doctors' families said their children are humanitarians who went "to Turkey willingly to offer voluntary medical help to those refugees who are in need of medical care on Turkey's borders."

They have since "disappeared," the statement said.

"We have heard from the British, Turkish and Sudanese authorities that we have so far met, but we hope that the respectable governments of these countries would enforce, speed up and coordinate more effective measures to ensure the safety of our children wherever they are and bring them back to us as soon as possible," the statement said.

Eight of the group are medical students who've just graduated, and the three others are in their final year of medical school, he said. They'd been studying in Khartoum, Sudan.

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Medical students 'brainwashed' in Syria