Turkey faces tourism boycott over 'horrendous' stray dog plan

A leading animal welfare campaigner is warning international tourists may boycott Turkey if it moves to vanquish its street dogs.

The inset shows a group of street dogs. The background features a Turkish beach with people sunbaking.
Turkey's multi-million dollar tourism sector could face a blow if it wipes out stray dogs. Source: Reuters

Holidaymakers could soon boycott Turkey over a radical solution designed to vanquish stray dogs from its streets. For centuries, human residents have shared their cities with the animals, but a planned crackdown could see millions of them rounded up and euthanised.

Dominic Dyer, a leading animal welfare campaigner in the United Kingdom, said the decision could have a direct economic impact on the nation’s all important tourism sector — worth an estimated US $64 billion ($97 billion) in 2023.

“It’s not just British, it’s the Germans, Dutch and Swedes and other holidaymakers who go there in their millions who are saying they'll just travel somewhere else,” he told Yahoo News.

“So there is significant potential damage to Turkey's reputation if it goes ahead. Particularly once we see these images emerge in the world of large numbers of animals being killed.”

A street dog in turkey wandering in front of buildings.
Turkish authorities estimate there are 4 million street dogs across the country. Source: Dr Fatima Günay

Calls for the country’s right-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to abandon its dog killing agenda have also been widespread in Turkey. Tens of thousands of protesters in multiple cities have taken to the streets chanting “No to the massacre”.

The kill-plan has also sparked concern far away in Australia at Humane Society International. Its animal welfare campaigner Georgie Dolphin was part of the non-profit's first responder team that flew to Turkey in 2023 following a devastating earthquake, helping not only pet owners and their animals but also strays.

“It’s heartbreaking to think that dogs we helped rescue and cared for might be euthanised when there are humane alternatives on the table,” she told Yahoo News on Wednesday.

She has called on the country’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to reconsider changing legislation and focus on mass dog sterilisation, vaccination and community engagement.

“This will be far more effective in the long term and is considered best practices and the most humane approach.”

An animal right activist holds a sign protesting against plans to kill stray dogs.
Tens of thousands of Turks have protested against planned anti-street dog regulations. Source: Getty

Turkish vet Dr Fatima Günay understands the problems street dogs pose. There are reported to be four million stray dogs in Turkey. She was attacked by one when she was 10 years old.

“It traumatised me. And I only got over my dog phobia when I was 25,” she said.

“It’s the truth, there is a huge street dog issue. But the brutal thing is the solution. The dogs are living things who have been with us for thousands of years. And I certainly don’t agree [killing them] is the way to solve the problem.”

Günay has struggled to find the funds needed to neuter strays. She believes calls to wipe them out instead may have begun to germinate after Turks moved overseas to other countries like Germany — where the diaspora are the largest ethnic minority group — and realised the animals weren’t common.

“People were comparing Europe and America to Turkey. And they say there are no street dogs here and people can live peacefully and walk in the street without thinking about being attacked,” she said.

A 2004 law introduced by President Erdoğan had required city governments to vaccinate and release strays.

But their presence began attracting negative attention in 2021 after reports a pack had killed children. This prompted President Erdoğan to call on city officials to round the dogs up.

Sadly the response was less than humane — footage that Dyer describes as "horrendous" went viral on social media showing a dog savagely beaten. And there were reports of other animals left in tiny cages to starve by local authorities who were not financially equipped to sterilise or rehome them.

While problems with dog aggression in some areas are undeniable, the majority of street dogs are docile. That’s because rather than buying individual pets, many people in small towns have traditionally pooled money to communally feed the local strays.

A dog and cat in Turkey.
While some street dogs are aggressive, most are docile. Source: Getty

The call to wipe dogs from the streets is widely seen as a political move by the AKP to continue favour with its conservative supporter base.

Dyer thinks stray dogs are a national issue, which splits Turkish in two, creating a cultural divide.

“You have the more conservative communities who traditionally support the AKP and Erdoğan who consider the dogs as more of a threat. They don't have dogs as pets, and many are poorly educated and they demonise the animals,” he said.

“Then you have the secular Turks — millions of people, who like in many Western countries own dogs. They spend an awful lot of money looking after their dogs and want to look after the stray animals.

“There are a lot of women and not just young women, but also those in poor areas, who are out feeding dogs and looking after them or going to the shelters to to protest against the mistreatment of dogs.”

In May, Erdoğan escalated plans to wipe out the dogs, claiming stray numbers were on the rise. “We have a stray dog problem that does not exist in any developed country,” he said.

He called for a “radical solution” to the problem. And his government responded with a plan that would see all of the country’s four million street dogs rounded up, and those not rehomed in 30 days killed.

That plan has since been watered down. A new bill was passed by a parliamentary commission this week which appears to limit the circumstances in which dogs can be euthanised.

But municipalities will still be required to remove stray dogs from the streets and put them in shelters. They will have to improve conditions inside shelters by 2028.

Several Turkish shelters believe the plan offers little funding for cities to deal with stray dogs, and there is ambiguity in the law which permits euthanasia.

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