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Turkish police crack down on gang forcing
children into theft
3.12.2005
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ISTANBUL, Dec 2 (AFP)
- 18h35 - Turkish police have detained 17 people in
an operation against a gang that allegedly forced
Kurdish children into theft and was linked to
separatist Kurdish rebels, officials said Friday.
The suspects were apprehended in Istanbul and
Diyarbakir, the central city of Turkey's mainly
Kurdish southeast from where the children were
brought and forced into pocket-picking,
purse-snatching and theft, Istanbul police chief
Celalettin Cerrah was quoted as saying by Anatolia
news agency.
The operation was the result of a 10-month probe
launched by the police after they discovered that
people investigated for drug-trafficking were also
bringing children to Istanbul, he said.
Part of the narcotic pills the gang was peddling
belonged to "the separatist terrorist organization,"
Cerrah said, using the officialese for the rebel
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has fought
Ankara since 1984.
The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey
as well as the European Union and the United States,
has long been accused of drug-trafficking to finance
its armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the
southeast.
Police seized 11 unlicensed weapons, ammunition and
fake identity cards in the homes and buildings used
by the suspects, Cerrah said.
Juvenile crime in Turkey has notably increased over
the past several years, which saw the country
battling severe financial turmoil.
The problem is particularly rife in Diyarbakir,
where chronic economic woes have been further
aggravated with the arrival of thousands of
impoverished migrants from surrounding villages,
displaced by the Kurdish conflict in the region.
An official report published Thursday said children
as young as five are also being forced by their
parents, mostly Kurdish migrants, to work on the
streets of Istanbul.
AFP
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