Turkey’s Stray Dogs To Get Better Protection

Turkey’s political parties have pledged unanimous support for a bill to place animal abuse under the Turkish Penal Code (reported here). At present any such cases are treated as mere misdemeanors and offenders normally given a small fine. This reclassification of animal cruelty could mean punishments of 3-year jail terms and should act as a better deterrent.

At present, cruelty to somebody else’s pet does actually already risk harder punishment but because the owner suffered (financial and property loss) not because the animal suffered.

This change is most notably relevant to stray dogs which, as elsewhere in the world, are particularly vulnerable to cruelty and often bear the brunt of misdirected human aggression. It should also deter some of the cruel current measures used by some municipalities to deal with their stray dog populations through, for example, poisoning.

As I wrote in an earlier blog about Istanbul, Turkey has an interesting but chequered historical relationship with its unowned dogs. A quote in the above article touches on this theme: “Historically, Turkey doesn’t have a history of mistreating animals but, ironically, efforts to modernize Turkey came hand-in-hand with the implementation of draconian methods to attempt to control animal populations.”