Car with French number plate causes mayhem in small Turkish town
AYDIN
Rumors that child kidnappers were travelling in a car with a French number plate have caused mayhem in the western Turkish province of Aydın.
According to Demirören News Agency, a 12-year-old in Aydın’s İncirliova district panicked when strangers in a minibus with a French license plate asked him about an address late July 9. The child ran home and told the incident to his parents, which spread rumors about a kidnapping incident.
Believing that suspected child abusers and kidnappers were detained by security forces, an angry crowd marched to the local police center and staged a protest.
A police commander invited two of the angry locals to the center and showed them that the detention room was empty. But even this did not calm down the crowd, the agency reported, and some locals started to attack police cars, damaging three of them.
As tensions ran even higher, local police asked for reinforcements from the city center.
The crowd was dispersed after Aydın Provincial Police Chief Rahmi Baştuğ came to the town and addressed them to assure that the rumors were baseless.
