Stray or street dogs of Istanbul – One-Shot Story

About 10 years ago, while I was questioning about the nature of the streets, I asked myself, who owns these public places. The question has the answer, I hear you. The definition of public is straight forward but the conceptual meaning behind it is more complex. Maybe, you’ve seen the one shot and either you feel the complexity, or you are now saying what the heck! That shot was part of a series about identity, isolation and allegiance. I made the stray animals the main subject. The photograph was taken at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul in 2014 with a Nikon FE, Nikon 50mm AF-D 1.4 loaded with Ilford hp5 400.

If you are a frequent visitor of the eastern countries, you may have noticed the dogs and cats wandering freely in the streets. If you are just a passerby, you will just think that they are stray animals. If you keep visiting the same place again and again, you will notice that they are part of that neighborhood, taken care of by the residents, shop keepers.

There is a legislation defining the rights of those animals and protecting them to a certain extend. The municipalities are ordered to keep them under control by inoculations, but if they don’t pose danger to the residents, human or animal, after the care, the officials must put them back wherever they are picked. This has been a long debate among the different parts of the society, basically between those calling them strays and those calling them street animals. The western civilization has been shown as a good example, stating that letting stray animals on the streets is not appropriate social attitude, considering the potential health hazards. The people have agreed that uncontrolled population of the animals will lead the neighborhoods to unmanageable situation. The motto was simple, sterilize, inoculate, and leave them to their natural habitats, the streets. There was an expectation that the policy will solve the potential problems within a reasonable time, say 15-20 years. Probably, it would, if it had been applied in a broad scope.

Couple of months ago, a new legislation has passed, changing the approach significantly. The stray/street dogs will be contained in a shelter indefinitely, where they were kept there for a short period of time in the previous process. People will be encouraged to adopt and those who cannot be adopted might have been put into ‘sleep’. Later the terminology changed, that only dangerous animals will be put into ‘sleep’. Knowing the conditions of the shelters, the protesters have been emphasizing that this legislation will bring catastrophe for the municipalities and forcing them to terminate the lives of the thousands of dogs. The street dogs could be dangerous and there have been cases the dogs attacking other people and pets, the pro-legislation people have been advocating. The anti-legislation people have been saying these are isolated cases cannot be considered as common, should be treated accordingly. I am personally on the anti-part, believing the previous legislation was good enough but the operational issues should be addressed, and proper resources should be allocated to the municipalities so that the legislation can be applied efficiently.

The debates have been huge and there are still anti-legislation campaigns going on since the bill has been taken to the supreme court. We will see what will happen soon.

I tried to keep the subject as brief as possible since there are more complex social conflicts behind the scenes, highly politically motivated. It would be very hard to cover all the aspects. If you are interested to understand more, please comment below.

Thanks for reading.

You may reach me @mcmrn

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