Turkey's street-living dogs

Thoughts in light of Turkey's controversial "adoption" law

In response to a growing population of street-living dogs and approximately 75 human deaths attributed to such dogs, Turkey is on the verge of adopting a controversial law which will mandate the rounding up of all street-living dogs. The law has been approved by the legislature and is awaiting presidential signature. Before such a law was even a murmur, there was an interesting documentary about street-living dogs in Istanbul. I want to juxtapose the law and current situation with the perspective of a street-living dog.

Photo by Amo on Unsplash

The law

The law requires municipalities to collect all street-living dogs and deliver them to shelters for vaccination, neutering, spaying or euthanising if the dogs are terminally ill or in pain. The dogs would then be adoptable, but not released back to their street-living life. This begs the question of what will happen to healthy and unadaptable dogs, leading many to challenge the characterisation of this law as a murder rather than an adoption law.

Interestingly, there is an existing law which requires strays to be vaccinated, spayed/neutered and released. It hasn’t been enforced and I suspect there are very little funds to do so. And there doesn’t seem to be additional funding provided to municipalities to implement the new law. So, no money to build extra capacity in shelters or hire more vets or assistants. How any of this will be carried out is questionable.

The human component

Like with anything related to non-human animals, there is a human component, especially when it comes to oppression and exploitation. The law provides for the arrest and imprisonment for up to two years of any mayor who refuses to implement the law or tackle the “stray” problem. Interestingly, one of the opposition parties, which won in some of the country’s biggest municipalities, has stated they won’t apply the law. The law might be used to round up dogs and people.

Is anything being done about prohibiting dog breeding, buying and selling? Of course not. Is anything being done about changing our relationship to other animals to end our using them as commodities and then discarding them as problems once our neglect results in the obvious? Of course not. We should be addressing our relationship with non-human animals as the fundamental problem and not imposing the ultimate penalty on beings who are completely blameless.

Stray: the documentary

What does life look like for a street-living dog? Doesn’t freedom have a value? Stray, a 2020 documentary I saw presented at the London Film Festival provides a thought provoking view.

Films about animals always makes me very nervous and I generally avoid them. It’s impossible for animals to have agency under human control and I don’t want to see the already fraught relationship exploited further. Stray was different.

It’s primarily about a stray dog, Zeytin, a proud and strong female living on the streets of Istanbul, where until now street-living dogs were allowed to live and roam freely. They’ve been fed by people (yes, even during pandemic lockdown). Despite being free, it’s not an ideal life because they’re still living in a world made by and only for humans, which is beyond their natural comprehension. The street-living dogs are surviving at its margins.

This documentary was filmed between 2017 and 2019 and mostly from the viewpoint of Zeytin. All the shots are sort of leg height or from the ground up, which was very interesting. The change in perspective very much transports you and sometimes makes you uneasy. The filmmakers follow Zeytin and some other dogs, and we learn from the director, Elizabeth Lo, Zeytin never followed them back. Which I loved. Zeytin lived freely and autonomously.

Because of Zeytin, the filmmakers meet a group of refugees from Syria. They’re young boys, sleeping rough, huffing glue and seeking love and companionship. They love Zeytin and they long for a dog of their own to care for. The marginality of existence of both the refugees and the dogs is dramatic and unjust. Some people are kind to them, while others chase them away and others are kinder to the dogs than they are to the boys. None of it is right.

I don’t equate human and animal suffering. They both exist simultaneously and the reasons for both originate when we decide who will have what rights and who will be treated as an object or a nuisance. Those decisions are often based solely on what we want and what suits us. This film illustrates this painfully perfectly. And it clearly resonates in light of this new law.

Body count

A final thought.

Turkey estimates there are four million street-living dogs. Potentially, four million dogs will be slaughtered because of this new law.

Meanwhile, Turkey has “produced” 4.67 million tonnes of meat (cattle, poultry, sheep/mutton, goat, pigmeat, and wild game) in 2022, up from 4.26 million tonnes in 2021 and 477,924 tonnes in 1961. How many individual animals those millions of tonnes equates is unfathomable.

The fundamental right to live and not be exploited as a commodity is inherent to all animals, not just dogs and those animals whom we fetishise.