Dogs have been a prominent part of Turkish culture for centuries. The Kangal Shepherd breed is a national treasure featured on postage stamps, and some strays have become local celebrities, like Boji, who earned fame for riding Istanbul’s public transportation.
But this year, Turkey’s stray dogs have become a contentious political issue.
The country’s parliament passed a law this week requiring municipalities to round up stray dogs and put them into shelters, and permitting aggressive or ill animals to be euthanized. The law mandates shelter improvements by 2028 and threatens mayors with prison time if they don’t enforce the law.
But critics have expressed fears that the law may be used to target political opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party pushed through the legislation. Some are also concerned about inadequate, overcrowded shelters for the country’s stray dog population – estimated to be around 4 million.
“The shelter capacity is insufficient,” said Dr. Murat Arslan, president of the Turkish Veterinary Medical Association. All the country’s shelters combined have capacity for just over 100,000 animals, he said, and most municipalities have no shelters at all.
“Currently, 3,000 veterinarians are employed in municipalities, but at least 10,000 more are needed,” Arslan said, noting that the new law does not require hiring additional veterinarians. In December, Arslan’s agency presented its recommendations to the government. “We provided our report and explained the source of the problem,” he said. “I don’t think they took any of it into account.”
Erdogan cited dogs attacking people and other animals, as well as causing traffic accidents, in pushing for the law. “Although some people persistently ignore it, Turkey has a stray dog problem,” he told legislators last week, according to The Associated Press. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party did not respond to requests for comment.
But critics of the law believe it is motivated more by politics than by safety concerns.
“The law is claimed to solve the problem of stray animals on the streets, but it rather seems like a political move,” said Ahmet Kasim Han, a professor of politics at Beykoz University in Istanbul.
Erdogan’s party suffered significant losses in local elections in March – its worst showing in local elections since its foundation and a major setback for Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than two decades.
Han saw the new law as a way for Erdogan’s government to push back on local opposition.
“It now seeks to limit the opportunities available to opposition municipalities and mayors, to stop them from expanding their voter base,” he said of the president’s party.
The legislation could also help shore up support among Erdogan’s base, which has been hard hit by persistent, high inflation that declined slightly to 71% in June, the government said. His supporters are primarily from working-class, lower-middle-class and rural backgrounds, said Soner Cagaptay, author of a biography of Erdogan and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In Turkey, in-house dog ownership is associated with increased incomes and middle-class status, he said.
Erdogan’s supporters also tend to be more observant Muslims, Cagaptay said, many of whom consider it unclean to keep dogs as pets. “He’s approaching this in a way that aligns with his base, where the mass culling of dogs has been embraced by pro-Erdogan pundits,” Cagaptay said.
He added: “This is not just about that brutal act of mass killing of dogs, but it’s also informed by class, Islamic lifestyle, and the unending war between Erdogan and the opposition.”
The bill may still meet resistance across Turkey: The Republican People’s Party, the opposition party that won local elections in many of the country’s biggest municipalities earlier this year, has said it will not implement the law.
Aysu Bankoglu, a member of parliament with the Republican People’s Party, said it planned to appeal to the Constitutional Court to repeal the law. “We will try to build new animal shelters while raising the capacity of existing shelters,” she said. “We will spay and vaccinate dogs with the budget of our municipalities. Stray dogs will not die, they will remain alive, they will survive.”
Still, concerned animal welfare groups have called the bill the “massacre law.” In the past few days, thousands have taken to the streets across Turkey, protesting the law’s provision that allows for some strays to be euthanized.
“There is a genocidal discourse targeting the eradication of street animals,” said Mine Yildirim, assistant professor at Kadir Has University and president of the Four-Legged City, a national animal rescue and protection organization. “Practically, this is impossible. Any attempt to annihilate these animals will fail, because we are committed to protecting them.”
Others are less optimistic.
“Shelters lack the capacity to house all the collected dogs,” said Ece Unver, the general manager of the SemtPati Foundation, an organization that works to help the street dog population with the CNVR method, standing for catch, neuter, vaccinate and return. “This is why it’s expected that the majority of the dogs will be killed or die in overcrowded shelters.”
Arslan said the potential pressure for veterinarians to euthanize animals was leading some of his colleagues to consider resignation.
“Our education prioritizes keeping animals alive,” Arslan said. “But in Turkey, if our colleagues are pressured by administrators or fear for their job security, leading to their professional judgment being overridden, it would be a significant trauma. This marks the beginning of a very difficult period for us.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.