In Istanbul, the dog days of summer started early this year. Despite the heat, 10,000 of the city’s residents gathered in a sizzling hot square in Yenikapi, a bustling port district, on June 2 to protest a proposal by the Turkish government to capture and kill the stray canines that call the megalopolis home.
The proposal has shocked many in a country where people from across the political spectrum pride themselves on caring for stray animals. Istanbul has a unique communal pet culture in which even amid soaring prices, people put out saucers of milk each morning for strays. Demonstrators came from all walks of life, some carrying Michelangelo-inspired posters of fingers and paws touching. Silver-haired communists stood among elderly ladies in white Ataturk caps, joined by bohemians, women in hijab and the normally apolitical athleisure-clad elite, all shouting, “No to the massacre!”
Ece Ergin, an HR professional and, she says, a lover of all strays, carried a sign that said: “Stop animal cruelty and stop your bloody law.” She told me, “Look, we are all real people here, not what the government media says about us being some ‘crazy minority.’”
The demonstration in Yenikapi was just one of 19 coordinated events throughout the country protesting the proposal. The new draft law on animal rights has proposed euthanasia to control the growing number of stray dogs. If the legislation passed, dogs that meet the bill’s criteria would be collected, kept for 30 days and then killed (unless they are claimed). Animal lovers fear that this would lead to the death of hundreds of thousands of street dogs. But the intense public backlash may have the government walking back its plan.
As the bill triggered intense public debate, the Turkish Veterinary Association issued a statement that “animal-borne rabies are [actually] decreasing” and that “mass dog culling should not be part of the rabies control strategy.” According to the association, the solution is rather to vaccinate at least 70% of the dog population in order to prevent the spread of rabies. They said their members would not follow the current proposed law if passed.
Other activists argue that the dog breeding industry should be made more accountable, as this is contributing to the rising rate of abandoned animals.
Still, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has cited recent fatal dog attacks, statistics about rabies (the World Health Organization ranks Turkey as “high risk”) and dog-related car accidents to justify the need to “solve this problem in a radical way.”
During the country’s local elections in March, government-backed candidates and officials framed stray dogs as the country’s bogeyman (overshadowing the specter of refugees typically played up in elections): Canines were the reason children cannot go to school, why women cannot go to the market and why the elderly cannot complete their early morning prayer.
At the June demonstration in Istanbul, a marching band led a parade around a car park in solidarity against the attempted government measure, joined of course by four-legged allies in the procession. Many in attendance expressed fears that dogs were only the tip of the iceberg, with cats as the next target. The theme, overall, was protecting the weak from the strong.
Turkey is mired in a slew of socioeconomic crises, with the discourse over dogs part of a government attempt to pursue a multifront culture war amid its post-election flailing. The euthanasia proposal is all the more fascinating considering that animal rights have never been a partisan issue; through decades of political earthquakes, stray animals remained sacrosanct in Turkish politics. Now that appears to have begun to change, with animal rights emerging as a surprising and bizarrely unifying third-rail issue.
A 2004 animal protection law stipulated that all of Turkey’s strays required sterilization, vaccination and rehabilitation. In 2021, the Turkish parliament passed an animal-rights bill banning the sale of dogs and cats in pet shops, abolishing animal circuses and dolphin parks, and requiring dog and cat owners to get chip IDs for their pets.
Laws on the books are one thing, but in practice strays have never been effectively sterilized. Government shelters tasked with the actual job of neutering, spaying and vaccination have not been able to keep up with the supply of strays, especially on the outskirts of cities and in rural areas. Estimates put the number of stray dogs in Turkey at around 4 million. Puppies bought in the summer (or during COVID lockdowns) are often eventually abandoned, and municipalities required to take the necessary control measures lack the budget and capacity to keep up with the task. The answer may be that the government is simply trying to resolve this public health problem.
However, speculation is rife over the government’s actual rationale. As Turkey faces major economic and political challenges today, street dogs have been increasingly framed by the government as part of a culture war between the government’s religiously conservative base and its more secular opposition. Evidence in Islamic jurisprudence shows that the saliva of wild dogs is impure. Dogs can be more territorial and aggressive on the outskirts of town, where poorer segments of society live.
Erdogan called on city officials to round up strays after a child was injured in 2021, blaming the country’s elite for the issue: “White Turks, take responsibility for your animals. These dogs are the dogs of the wealthy.” The controversial Turkish soap opera “Cranberry Sorbet,” which focuses on taboos along the secular-conservative divide, aired an episode about the conflict the protagonist faces in trying to bring a stray dog into her religious husband’s family home. A beloved stray dog Boji, who gained fame for being seen riding Istanbul’s many trams, transit trains and ferries, was made a media star by Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. However, Boji eventually fell victim to a framing, accused of responsibility for excrement on a city tram that was publicized by pro-Erdogan accounts. Later, security footage revealed that someone planted the manure that Boji was originally defamed for, further pitting government and opposition blocs against each other.
Despite the nationwide affection for man’s best friend, there is growing criticism in Turkey that stray dogs should not be put back on the street after being neutered, out of concern that they can attack people, especially the elderly and children, or cause accidents.
In the past two years, there has been a gradual increase in reporting of people who have been attacked by street dogs in pro-government outlets like Sabah as well as Islamist papers like Yeni Akit. Even the state broadcaster, AA, is following suit.
Right-wing online groups like Safe Streets Association describe a surge of deaths caused by stray dogs, highlighting “child victims of dog terror.” One member falsely stated, “Scientists say the best way to fight rabies is by killing dogs.”
AKP parliamentarians have also called for “mass castration.” One professor at a panel this year described the danger stray dogs present to humans: “Power unrestrained produces terror.” She called for zero strays as the only solution. But pro-animal rights activists pushed back, highlighting a “troll mafia” and a string of bots pumping out antidog content.
Theories behind the current eradication proposal include that this is a government effort to shift attention away from more pressing topics, like hyperinflation. Or maybe this is part of Erdogan’s plan to attract investment from wealthy Gulf Arabs — the activists think those investors don’t like dogs. Or, perhaps, Erdogan’s gaggle of construction industry allies want to secure new contracts to build huge animal shelters across the country. Or given the trouncing that Erdogan’s AKP experienced at the hands of opposition parties in recent municipal elections, it may also be a way to put pressure on the new opposition-led municipal governments or for the central government to invoke the legal practice of “kayyum” (trusteeship), through which it can replace and appoint municipal governments for failing to manage the crisis.
Turks — religious or not — still have serious love for the animals. In 2022, a viral video showed employees abusing a dog at a shelter, hitting it with a shovel before strangling it. The incident caused widespread outrage and sparked a national debate, involving everyone from Turkey’s first lady to the pop prince Tarkan. But just like shoes, dogs for anyone but the elite are seen as too dirty to enter the house.
The population of Istanbul has lived with hounds since time immemorial. Barking dogs may have saved Byzantium from a surprise Macedonian attack in 340 BCE. The Ottoman Empire dutifully followed the Prophet Muhammad’s words that even someone wicked could go to heaven if they gave water to a dog. A 13th-century mosque was established to protect strays. Dogs were said to have accompanied the army of Mehmed II, who conquered Constantinople in 1453. In the subsequent years, local lore holds that dogs ate refuse and loyally protected residents from dangerous foreigners and rodents or raised the alarm at night when fires had broken out in the city, solidifying their value in the social fabric of Istanbul. One could see street vendors selling dog food and foundations dedicated to the feeding of animals. Turkish citizens today have accepted these traditions and continue to take care of them today.
It was a marvel for foreign visitors — from Mark Twain to Irish clergyman Robert Walsh, who visited in the early 19th century and described in a book a canine haven “where these animals are well cared for by the inhabitants, small reservoirs of water are placed at intervals in the streets, and butchers and bakers are appointed to supply them with meat and bread.”
Helmuth von Moltke, the famed Prussian military strategist, visited in 1837, noting: “Dogs are never allowed inside homes, but the streets are filled with thousands of these animals without masters, living on the alms of bakers, butchers, and, of course, their own efforts, for dogs here have taken on the duties of cleaners almost entirely.”
After four centuries, however, the coexistence of man and dog began to unravel. Ottoman leaders returning from Europe sought to use science to modernize the city during the “Tanzimat” period in the mid-19th century. They wanted Istanbul to be more like Paris or London, and they now saw street dogs as a problem, a source of disease and disorder. (In the current debate, Erdogan and his party have made similar modernization arguments for Turkey to get rid of its strays to be more like other developed countries).
Ottoman sultans began to round up the city’s stray dogs and remove them. Turks apparently refused to conduct such a disgraceful act, so the government hired Roma to complete the task. Sultan Mahmud II decreed that poisoned sausages be given to strays, while some citizens resisted by feeding them yogurt to nurse them back to health. He tried to ship dogs to a nearby island, but a storm hit the ship en route, and the dogs were able to swim back to shore. Residents saw this as a sign from God.
Government regulations stipulated that veterinarians kill rabid dogs, curbing the dissemination of rabies and other threats to public health. In 1886, an Ottoman delegation traveled to Paris to work under Louis Pasteur, who had administered the first successful human rabies vaccination a year earlier, before returning with the cure.
One foreign businessperson offered to buy all of Istanbul’s street dogs in exchange for their furs or to turn them into chemical products, but the government balked due to immense public backlash. After local pressure stymied multiple plots, the municipality eventually rounded up 80,000 dogs in 1910 to sell off to France for their hides.
Soldiers were deployed to block denizens from trying to rescue the dogs (many stuffed as many strays as possible in their homes), and the animals were shipped to a bleak island in the Sea of Marmara. The deal with the French fell through, so the dogs were left to languish in open-air detention.
People made continuous efforts to deliver food and water to the dogs until winter conditions made the sea impassable, and the dogs eventually died from hunger and thirst or from turning on each other. Istanbulites were haunted by their cries and later by the smell of their rotting carcasses carried to the mainland by a strong southerly wind.
One of the most destructive earthquakes of the 20th century struck the city a year later, followed closely by wars that led to the occupation of the city and the eventual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Some believed it was retribution for the dog massacre, arguably the first of many political victims under the Young Turks. They promised reforms — meant to revitalize Ottoman authority — but instead oversaw a period of disaster and collapse.
A century later, the Turkish government did put forth protections for strays. Today, shaggy dogs saunter the streets, bringing delight to many, looked after by many self-appointed guardians. One imam in Uskudar has opened up his mosque for strays to take shelter, and bowls of food and water are set out in every corner of the city, illustrating a sense of stewardship toward all living things.
Citizens have taken these lessons to heart and have stepped in to fill the gaps in what they see as insufficient government efforts. Zeynep Yelcin works as a security guard at a leafy park in central Istanbul. During the Covid lockdowns, people were no longer coming to the park to feed stray dogs and refill their water bowls.
“I developed a sense of empathy toward these lost souls,” she said, deciding to take on the responsibility. While she took care of any dog that entered the park, six of them rarely left her side. “They even accompany me to the metro at the end of my shift,” she said. She has continued to care for them over the last four years, their tails wagging from side to side each morning as she enters the park. Some have argued that care for Istanbul’s street animals is a form of intangible cultural heritage. Yelcin believes, as do many others, that they have a right to live on the street.
In June, following reports of rabies cases in the southern city of Urfa that were amplified in the media, the city’s new mayor conducted a massive roundup of strays (it was later found that the dog that caused the hysteria came back negative for rabies). He is a member of the New Welfare Party, an Islamist party that split away from the ruling government’s coalition before the last election, attacking the government from the right on socially conservative issues, including on the issue of strays, which helped the party eventually place third in the most recent elections. The government’s proposal to euthanize strays may stem from the tail wagging the dog rather than from the dog wagging the tail, as the AKP attempts to win back the voters they had lost in the last election.
The current debate misses the mark. There is in fact a stray dog issue, with the government citing over 3,500 dog-related road accidents over the past five years and over 55 people killed as a result. There are also growing fears of packs of dogs roaming the streets, especially on the outskirts of cities and towns. But love for strays transcends politics. Polls show both secular elites and working-class conservatives are overwhelmingly against the euthanasia plan.
The government appears to have misread the national mood amid the public backlash and has begun to back down from the original plan. AKP Chair Abdullah Guler last week toned down the party’s initial language, introducing legislation that would put to sleep strays who are at risk of rabies, have become aggressive or cannot be rehabilitated. Much like a century ago, the targeting of Istanbul’s dogs provoked unexpected opposition.
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