KEBABBLE Child thieves skirt
Turkish law By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - Pinar B has a neat,
pointy nose, cupid-like pink lips and
almond-shaped green eyes. Her medium-brown hair is
combed back in a loose ponytail. She smiles
sweetly, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling, as
she looks up at a Turkish policeman whose hand
rests fatherly on her jean-jacketed shoulder.
This was the recent front-page picture in
the Aksam newspaper under the headline "Save me"!
Forced into crime by her family, the girl
told reporters how she was locked in a dark room
and not fed when she didn't steal or
was
unsuccessful. She is responsible for at least 17
thefts.
"I want to go to school like other
children and play in the playground or in the
park," Pinar told reporters. "I want to have
friends but when I tell my parents this they beat
me. They say that I have to continue stealing
until I am 15."
Pinar's story is like a
modern-day version of Charles Dickens' Oliver
Twist, a morality tale of a starving child
caught in the grinding jaws of poverty and fought
over by the forces of good and evil. She is one of
300 children known to be working in organized
gangs. Two hundred are from Istanbul and about 100
from Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey.
Their
parents hand them over to criminals at age four or
five in return for money. Some families work in
concert with the gangs. Like the gypsy children in
the 1978 film King of the Gypsies, the
children are trained in pickpocketing and
organized mugging.
Modern-day Fagins set
up mannequins covered in small bells, and the
children have to pick the pockets in silence. If a
bell rings they are punished. The amoral structure
of the schooling is augmented by having the
children live together away from their families in
large houses. The children are taught to see the
world in a them-and-us way, and as their attitudes
and behavior are similar, they reinforce one
another and bond together deeply. Many of the
children are from criminal families - Pinar's
mother, Nazan, was in prison for theft when her
daughter was arrested.
After training, the
children are sent out to work. Each gang has its
own territory. Perhaps the best-known scam is
based in the arrival lounge of Istanbul's Ataturk
International Airport.
As passengers come
out of passport control, the youngest thieves,
five and six years old, are sent to scout luggage
tags. Passengers coming from wealthier countries
are targeted and followed. As they arrive at their
homes, the children are dropped off from the gang
leader's car, and two little ones run up to the
victim as if they live in the same building,
ostensibly to help them with their bags. Bags are
then passed to older children in the background
and spirited away to the car. Once the luggage
reaches the getaway vehicle, the children flee to
the car, which then speeds away. If the victim
realizes what has happened and tries to pursue the
car, his bags are thrown out the window. As he
scrambles to rescue his belongings, his attention
usually is distracted from the vehicle's license
plate. Pinar's last arrest was for just such a
grab when her gang made off with 40,000 Turkish
liras (about US$30,000).
In a swoop on
Istanbul airport in December police caught a
13-year-old who already had 83 thefts to his
credit. They were forced to release him, and he
has allegedly committed seven more thefts since.
If police pressure on one area becomes too
intense, the gangs simply switch locations - to
shopping malls or the Grand Bazaar, Istanbul's
well-known covered market.
The thieves
cannot be prosecuted or kept in custody because
they are minors. The gangs train them how to
handle being arrested and what to say in
interviews. It's likely Pinar's sad tale was
scripted. Under extreme duress the children are
encouraged to take the tranquilizers they carry.
Thus they are unable to be questioned properly,
and the gang gets enough time to rush a lawyer to
the police station.
After recording the
crime they have committed, the police turn the
children over to social services, which place the
troubled youngsters into children's homes. But
these homes rarely manage to contain or reform the
children.
Pinar was taken to the Eyup
Children's Home even though she had already run
away from there 16 times. The staff were sure she
would leave again. Also, it's common for parents
and gang leaders to storm the children's homes
with knives and clubs to abduct the children. Some
bribe employees with expensive gifts to let
children slip away.
When Pinar's mother
was released from jail this month, authorities
were concerned she might try to persuade Pinar to
leave the home. They acted preemptively and moved
Pinar to the Emrullah Turan Children's Home on the
outskirts of Istanbul, where security was tighter.
Still, within 24 hours she was gone; she and two
other girls there for theft sneaked away in the
lunchtime break. The government is in the process
of building a high-security children's home to
contain these kids; it should open this month.
Despite Pinar's public pleas that her soul
be saved, it is probably too late to rectify the
damage done to this young girl. Staff at the Eyup
Children's Home say her character is ruined.
She refuses to do anything unless there is
some reward, and having never been to school or
experienced family discipline, she is unable to
keep the home's rules. While other children are
motivated with treats, Pinar has already seen the
latest films, visited the fun fair and had good
clothes. She tells the house staff that stealing
is an easy way to get what she wants and therefore
a good thing.
Her recent media publicity
might hinder her activities for a while as she is
currently well recognized, but her gang will
probably dye and cut her hair so she can get back
to work.
She is safe from the law until
she turns 16, but her future beyond that is
unlikely to be promising. Illiterate and used to
living beyond the law, she is almost sure to end
up like her mother - stealing between spells in
jail.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish
descent, born and brought up in London. She moved
to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing
full time since then.
