On a heat summer season night in Ankara, 4 canines charged down one of many sleepy streets, barking with the self-assurance of animals having fun with the run of Turkey’s capital.
The noisy canine pack — some sporting brightly colored state-issued tags of their ears — are among the many estimated 4mn “avenue canines” that together with feral cats are ever-present in Turkey’s cities and sprawling countryside. The stray canine inhabitants is on a par with whole variety of individuals residing in Izmir, Turkey’s third-biggest province.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling social gathering has signalled that it’s going to quickly unveil a brand new, unpitying strategy to managing this huge inhabitants — not less than in terms of canines. Native governments can be required to spherical up strays, sterilise them and put them up for adoption. Those who fail to discover a residence after 30 days can be killed by injection, in response to a draft regulation circulated in state-aligned media.
“Now we have a stray canine downside that doesn’t exist in any developed nation,” Erdoğan mentioned in late Could, with out mentioning the reported plans for a cull.
A scientific programme to eradicate strays would mark a radical departure from 20 years of insurance policies which have centred on catching canines, sterilising them and returning them to the place they had been discovered. These insurance policies have been inconsistently carried out, in response to vets and politicians.
The query of what — if something — ought to be finished to take away strays from the nation’s streets has uncovered deep fissures in Turkish society, which incorporates some pious muslims who see canines as unclean.
Erdoğan has mentioned just lately that the stray canine downside had reached an “insufferable level”, citing public well being and security dangers. The president and different senior officers in his Justice and Growth social gathering have additionally mentioned the animals are holding again Turkey’s growth, since most wealthy nations are in a position to get stray animals off the streets.
Nonetheless, many animal lovers see avenue canines as an integral a part of Turkish life. Canine homes are an everyday sight in parks, whereas residents typically depart dry meals and even meat scraps out for the taking. Istanbul was residence to a well-known shepherd combine named Boji, who grew to become a fixture of town’s trams and ferries earlier than an argument prompted his adoption by a member of considered one of Turkey’s richest enterprise dynasties.
However others view the hordes of avenue canines as a harmful menace. There are not any complete statistics on stray-dog-related incidents, however the authorities has mentioned they’ve been liable for 1000’s of street accidents in recent times, a few of them deadly.
Sporadic experiences of stray canine assaults, significantly towards kids and the aged, captivate Turkish media and incite vigorous on-line debate.
“My daughter Mahra was hit by a truck whereas being chased by two stray canines and died . . . after struggling for her life for 23 days,” mentioned Murat Pınar, who based Turkey’s Protected Streets Affiliation after the demise in 2022 of his nine-year-old daughter.
He added: “The state wants to debate whether or not to sterilise, cull or take care of them as quickly as doable. It is vitally pressing to gather all of them.”
Erdi Küçük, an Ankara-based vet, agreed that avenue canines are a “risk” each to individuals and different animals. He mentioned stray animals are a public well being hazard. since they’ll unfold ailments via bites or excrement. The US Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention warns travellers that “canines contaminated with rabies are generally present in Turkey”.
Nonetheless, Küçük mentioned many vets together with himself can be unwilling to destroy wholesome animals. He advocates an strategy the place canines are collected and both adopted or sorted on devoted public lands.
Küçük’s view seems to match a lot of the broader Turkish inhabitants: virtually 80 per cent of these surveyed by Ankara-based Metropoll final 12 months mentioned that canines ought to be taken from the streets, however lower than 3 per cent mentioned they need to be killed.
Cihangir Gündoğdu, a professor at Istanbul Bilgi College who research the historical past of stray animals, mentioned the talk was hardly new. He famous that it had “galvanised society” way back to the nineteenth century, a time when the Ottoman Empire had been looking for to modernise civil society.
The drive to rid streets of stray canines from Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, reached its peak round 1910, when authorities banished some 80,000 canines to their doom on a barren island within the Sea of Marmara, Gündoğdu mentioned. The howls from the canines, deserted with no meals or entry to water, had been mentioned to be heard from the Istanbul shore.
As Erdoğan seems prepared to maneuver forward with a modern-day cull, some opposition politicians have begun to aspect with the road canines. Nimet Özdemir, an MP who has performed a key function in animal rights points for the opposition Iyi social gathering, worries that any marketing campaign would echo the “savagery” of the previous, since it might be tough to humanely kill so many animals. “I consider the demise of animals will occur in ache and brutality,” she mentioned.
Özdemir alleged that Erdoğan’s authorities, which has dominated Turkey for 20 years, had “magnified this small downside” by failing to correctly implement the sterilisation programme and was now “penalising probably the most harmless and innocent” for its shortcomings.
Gülüzar Çıtak, who based a privately-funded shelter that homes a whole lot of canines on the outskirts of Ankara, mentioned that it was essential to curb the pet breeding trade, since so many pet canines are deserted in Turkey.
Given the numbers of deserted pets, “breeding ought to be fully banned”, mentioned Çıtak as she walked across the out of doors property that homes canines of all sizes and shapes, from the hulking shepherds which are frequent on Turkish streets, to a shy husky and a playful golden retriever.
Çıtak recounted tales of how she discovered a mom and puppies deserted on the aspect of a street, whereas others had been left on the margins of villages, and plenty of have been injured in street accidents. Adoptions are uncommon, with solely round 5 animals taken from the shelter each month.
“Some got here as puppies . . . some had been thrown out on the road as a result of they had been previous,” she mentioned, including that “we’re full . . . I want we had a much bigger area.”
