At his shelter on the outskirts of Istanbul, Murat Cem Yetkin refers to his dozens of stray dogs as “the kids.”
There is Handsome, the pudgy hound, and a massive Kangal Shepherd named Sarin. Cared for and relatively free, they roam Yetkin’s rambling property — and are now among the luckier canines in Turkey.
This summer, the parliament passed a law to regulate the country’s roughly 4 million stray dogs. It requires municipalities to round up strays and put them in an overcrowded shelter network, and to euthanize dogs that are feral.
Animal rights activists, fearing a mass culling, have dubbed it the “massacre law.”
The measure was introduced by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party, prompted in part by highly publicized dog attacks, including on children. But it has drawn outrage in a country where a committed cadre of citizens have long cared for street animals, leaving food and water on the stoops and corners of Turkey’s cities, towns and villages, in a practice that dates back hundreds of years.