Families of Azov regiment fighters imprisoned at Mariupol’s Azovstal factory made an emotional appeal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

They urged him to “be a hero” and begin an extraction procedure for all the remaining fighters.

A father of an 18-year-old combatant encouraged Erdogan to grab “a historic opportunity to go down in history as a peacemaker, as a hero.”

Suharnikov requested that a civilian vessel be dispatched to Azovstal to fetch the fighter, citing examples from Syria and Dunkirk during World War II.

The fighter’s father also recommended that they be moved to a neutral nation far away from the fighting.

“As a man to man, a father to a father, I implore you to save my son and his comrades,” Evheniy Suharnikov pleaded.

He added, “We need a hero, a person with enough political authority to carry out this procedure. From a political and geographical perspective, we think Turkey can be that country and Erdogan can be that person.”

Families have amassed 1.5 million signatures on a petition to secure Azov fighters’ safe transit out of the factory.