When All Else Fails, Blame the Dogs
When I step out of my apartment in central Istanbul, dogs surround me. One lies dozing across the street. Another has sad eyes that are always looking for food, sympathy or both. They haunt city squares, they wait outside butchers and coffee shops. Some seem unhealthily overweight; others are skeletal.
Living in Turkey has for decades, even centuries, meant navigating the stray dogs. There are around four million of them, according to some estimates, but it’s hard to know for sure. For many people they are inseparable from the idea of Turkey itself.
Though maybe not for much longer. Just over a week ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing Justice and Development Party presented a bill to Parliament that would require municipalities to capture strays and put them in shelters. (Many of those shelters are dilapidated and overcrowded. The bill gives municipalities until 2028 to renovate existing shelters and build new ones.) Aggressive, rabid and ill dogs will be euthanized.
There has been fierce debate and protests over the fate of stray dogs since Mr. Erdogan proposed “radical” measures in a speech in May. Supporters of what came to be known as Mr. Erdogan’s “euthanasia bill” point to car accidents and injuries caused by the dogs. They say that streets are not suitable homes for dogs, and that their presence makes cities more dangerous for humans and animals alike. Critics of the plan, myself included, argue for sterilization instead of euthanasia. We also fear the worst: that beloved dogs we’ve looked after for months or years might suddenly disappear because an overanxious citizen placed an anonymous call.
I also can’t shake the sense that for the government this is not really about the dogs. Mr. Erdogan long ago mastered the art of scapegoating — in his more than 20 years in power he has pointed to intellectuals, journalists, refugees and others as the source of Turkey’s troubles. With the economy faltering, and after a poor showing in spring municipal elections, he and his party have again been looking for somewhere to redirect people’s ire.
