Turkey to regulate stray dog population, raising fears about mass killings: ‘this spells death’
- Turkey’s ruling party presented a bill to parliament to round up millions of stray dogs, which advocates fear could result in the killing of the animals
A Turkish bill aimed at regulating the country’s millions of stray dogs moved closer to becoming law on Wednesday as animal rights advocates fear many of them will be killed or end up in neglected, overcrowded shelters.
“Although some people persistently ignore it, Turkey has a stray dog problem,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party proposed the bill, told legislators after a parliamentary committee approved the bill late Tuesday. The full assembly will have a final vote in the coming days.
The government estimates that around 4 million stray dogs roam Turkey’s streets and rural areas. Although many are harmless, a growing number are congregating in packs, and numerous people have been attacked in Istanbul and elsewhere. The country’s well-known large stray cat population is not a focus of the bill.
Erdogan noted that stray dogs “attack children, adults, elderly people and other animals. They attack flocks of sheep and goats, they cause traffic accidents.”
The proposed legislation mandates that municipalities collect stray dogs and house them in shelters, where they would be neutered and spayed. Dogs that are in pain, terminally ill, pose a health risk to humans or are aggressive would be euthanised.
Municipalities would be required to build dog shelters or improve conditions in existing ones by 2028.