DIYARBAKIR (Turkey): Deniz was 10 when he committed his first crime. “I stole a few candy bars; it was pretty easy,” recalled the gaunt teenager, his speech slurred by chronic drug abuse. “Now I do cell phones.”

Deniz, who just turned 17, is part of a swelling band of juvenile criminals roaming the streets of this predominantly Kurdish city of 1.5 million people in Turkey’s impoverished southeast region. Delinquents are blamed for a skyrocketing number of pedestrian muggings, stolen cars and house robberies.

Muggings carried out by juveniles — many of them substance abusers between 15 and 18 years old — rose by a staggering 94 per cent in 2004, according to a report released this week by the Diyarbakir security directorate. More than half of the offenders do not attend school, and police say there are at least 30 juvenile gangs operating in the city.

“Juvenile crime is the most serious problem in Diyarbakir, and we are unable to cope,” says Firat Anli, the mayor of Diyarbakir’s commercial Yenisehir district, among the worst affected.

The rise in juvenile crime here is widely linked to the 15-year-long fight between the Kurdish separatist insurgency and the Turkish army. The army’s scorched-earth campaign in battling the insurgency that has been led by a rebel group called the PKK resulted in 1.5 million Kurds, including Deniz’s family, fleeing their villages.

Many of the refugees wound up in shanty dwellings that sprung up around cities across the southeast.

Without the means to feed large families, parents began looking the other way as their children took to the streets, first to beg, then to take menial jobs and eventually to steal, peddle drugs and prostitute themselves.

Irfan Polat, a social worker who deals with Deniz, says boys who start bringing in money from their criminal activities often supplant jobless fathers as the head of the family and can no longer be disciplined. Many end up in juvenile detention centres where they face sexual and physical abuse from wardens, said a government social worker in Ankara, who asked not to be identified.

The centres are ‘kind of like shelters for stray dogs’, he added.

Bedrettin Karaboga, a Kurdish business leader, lays part of the blame on Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party, saying it has not ‘invested a single penny’ or ‘created a single job’ in the Kurdish region since coming to power two-and-a-half years ago.

Last month Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan formed a committee to draw up a comprehensive national action plan to get children across Turkey off the streets and out of crime.

“In major cities affected by internal migration ... the question of street children has emerged as a significant social problem,” Erdogan said in an internal government memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times .

In Diyarbakir, Efkan Ala, the provincial governor and Mayor Anli have teamed up to build a recreation and education centre for street children. Some cynics insist the government is taking action only because the problem is no longer confined to Diyarbakir. Juvenile gangs have started to ply their trade in luxurious resorts along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts and in Turkey’s commercial capital, Istanbul.

“We go in the summer at the peak of the tourist season,” said a gang leader, who declined to be identified by name. — Dawn/LAT-WP News Service