Managing Street Dogs and Cats in Turkey
The conference we spoke at in Bursa, Turkey was organized to help educate veterinarians from all over the country who work in animal shelters. Turkey has a huge problem with free-roaming dogs and cats and the country is struggling with ways to manage the problem. No one knows how many street cats and dogs there are in Turkey. One estimate is that in Istanbul, a city of 11.3 million people, there are at least 150,000 free-roaming dogs. Rabies is endemic in Turkish dogs and every year there are a small number of people who die from the bites of rabid dogs. The Turkish federal government passed a law a few years ago requiring cities to control the roaming dogs. But as in America, few cities have all the resources they need to effectively control the loose animals.
Cultural issues further complicate things. Many Turks are quite comfortable with, and even enjoy, having the free-roaming dogs around. Free-roaming dogs have been documented in Istanbul for several hundred years at least, perhaps longer. Today, dogs are found most anywhere – even in this patio area of a Starbucks in Istanbul
Furthermore, Turks are very much against euthanasia of dogs and cats for “population control”. This is in contrast to the U.S. where there has been very little tolerance of free-roaming dogs and where euthanasia of healthy but unwanted dogs has been a common, although controversial, public health policy for at least 50 years. This is changing in the U.S. today as the numbers of free-roaming dogs has declined and as public sentiment about euthanasia of unowned dogs has evolved.
The strategy being tried in Turkey is trap-spay/neuter-vaccinate/treat and release. Free-roaming dogs are picked up off the streets and taken to local shelters where they are spayed or neutered, vaccinated for rabies and other diseases, treated for minor illnesses, ear-tagged for identification, and then released back to the neighborhood where they were trapped. You can see one of the tagged street dogs in the photograph below.
It is hoped that the populations of free-roaming dogs will decline because they are not breeding and the small populations that are left will be healthier and will not present a public health hazard. This is based on the assumption that the majority of the free-roaming dogs come from the breeding of other free-roaming dogs, and not from owned dogs that escaped, or were dumped by their owners. Because population demographics are unavailable (e.g. no one knows where the street dogs come from) it is unclear if the Turkish strategy will be effective. We’ll have to wait and see.
What we learned from the conference is that control of free-roaming dogs and cats is a world-wide problem and that there is no one best strategy for dealing them. Beyond pragmatic and scientific considerations, cultural heritage and ethical beliefs must be taken into consideration. These will influence the ways different peoples address their animal problems.
7 Responses to “Managing Street Dogs and Cats in Turkey”
Suz and Dan
Dear Maggi – Thanks for your interesting comment. Cudos to you for all the work you’ve done. It will be very interesting to see your long term results as you monitor the effect of your s/n-release on the overall population of street animals. Will recruitment outpace your efforts? Or will populations eventually decline because of your s/n efforts? I’m sure many organizations around the world can be helped by what you find out.
Good luck!
Suzanne
Maggi Celik
Dear Suzanne and Dan,
I was very interested in your article because I am a member of a Turkish association called Kapsa – Kalkan assciation for the protection of street animals. We are based in a Kalkan, a small touritic town on the south coast of Turkey. Kapsa is an NGO funded completely by donations (although we did gratefully recieve one grant last year from a UK based Charity animals worldwide) We run a neuter and return programme and since becoming a registered charity in 2008 we have neutered over 700 cats and dogs in Kalkan and surrounding villages.
I couldn’t agree more with your comments about cultural differences. Most Turkish people are completely against euthenasia, a point that some of our European residents do not seem to have grasped.
Thank you for a most interesting article.
Behavioral Ecology & Evolution of Dogs | Behind the Behavior
[...] Associates about the Behavior of Turkish Street Dogs (they reference Coppinger’s book) and Managing Street Dogs and Cats in Turkey. They touch on a topic which Coppinger touched on in his lecture about how inhumane rescue can be [...]
Suz and Dan
Dear Jackie –
I (Suzanne) worked in a large, privately funded metropolitation animal shelter for four years – the Denver Dumb Friends League – and was instrumental in creating their Behavior HelpLine, so I know how difficult it is to euthanize healthy animals. The fact is, the U.S. does use euthanasia as a means of population control – and both you and I and anyone who has ever surrendered a pet to a shelter have been part of that.
The point of our article, which we think you may have missed, is that there are cultural differences that must be taken into account. In fact, several of the speakers at the conference pointed out that Western solutions were not necessarily appropriate for their country.
Since you haven’t been to Turkey, you can’t know what the “shelters” are like there. The one we visited was the exception rather than the rule. From our observations, – and it is our understanding it is also the opinion as well of many of the Turkish people – that in some cases life on the streets is better than confinement for life under not good conditions.
There were far too many dogs for all of them ever to be adopted – just as is the case here in the U.S. And since some of them were never “owned” by anyone – so”reuniting” with its person is not an option.
You are certainly entitled to your beliefs and opinions, but one of the points of our article is that we should not be too quick to impose U.S. standards on other countries. Perhaps the better solution for Turkey is to find ways to make “street life” less hard for these animals. Something you might not have thought of.
Suzanne and Dan
Suz and Dan
Great question Vitta. According to the folks we met in Turkey, the dogs in the tourist areas tend to be more well fed because the tourists feed them! But in the more outlying areas conditions are worse, with dogs less healthy. The health status of dogs we saw in the shelter we visited varied from really good, to pretty bad – especially with the ones that had just been brought in from the street in certain areas.
Suzanne
Jackie Phillips
I would like to talk about a few points you made in your recent article.
This problem you state occurring in Turkey is very common around the world, EXCEPT in the US. Rabies in domestic animals is extremely rare due to a very strong rabies vaccination program. Free roaming dogs is becoming more and more rare due to stronger enforcement by animal control agencies and stricter leash laws.
I have worked and volunteered in animal shelters, both public and private, and I have been the one to euthanize healthy adoptable animals. Euthanasia is not an acceptable solution to the problem of over population, however, in my experienced opinion, it is far more acceptable than allowing an animal to roam loose on the street, get hit by cars, be chased by animals and people and die of starvation, heatstroke, hypothermia or disease. I would never choose to release an animal back onto the streets as a solution to over population. At a shelter, at least, the animal has a chance of getting adopted, reunited with its person or die a quiet and humane death.
Gitta Vaughn
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
I noticed the dogs all look fairly healthy compared to the free roaming dogs I see around here. Most them are extremely skinny and often appear to be mange infested. Are the dogs in your pictures the exception, or do these dogs do look healthier in general?