``Take off your ear studs, hide your tattoos,'' warned the daily Sabah on its front page on Thursday. Newspapers and television programs have been full of images of youngsters being handcuffed and taken away because they displayed outward signs police associate with devil worshippers.

These include jewellery, tattoos, long hair or shaved heads, goatees and black T-shirts especially those bearing the logos of heavy metal bands. Even the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported three teenagers, ``suspected leaders of a group of 70 Satanists'' detained, then released in the town of Aydin. Sabah singled out one of those arrested in Istanbul a grade school teacher who allegedly moonlighted as the operator of a tattoo parlor ``for Satanist'' -- as a ``teacher by day, devil bynight''.

A columnist for the Cumhuriyet recounted, tongue-in-cheek, how police proudly announced the seizure of ``the Satanists' publication'' issues of The Ghost Ship, an art magazine published by academics and students at Istanbul's Bogazici University.

The furore was sparked when police Monday arrested three Satanists who admitted to the ritual murder in a cemetary of a young woman to appease the devil so he would stop earthquakes hitting Turkey.

Agence France Presse