Turkish legislators have approved a law aimed at removing millions of stray dogs from the country’s streets that animal lovers fear will lead to many of the dogs being killed or ending up in neglected, overcrowded shelters.
Some critics also say the law will be used to target the opposition, which made huge gains in the latest local elections. The legislation includes penalties for mayors who fail to carry out its provisions and the main opposition party has promised not to implement it.
Deputies in the Turkish grand national assembly approved the legislation on Tuesday after a marathon overnight session as the government pushed to have it passed before the summer recess. Thousands have joined protests across Turkey calling for the scrapping of an article that would allow some stray animals to be euthanised. Opposition lawmakers, animal welfare groups and others have called the bill the “massacre law”.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who now needs to sign the measure into law, thanked his ruling party and allied parties’ legislators who voted in favour of the legislation after an “intense and tiring” session.
“Despite the opposition’s provocations and campaigns based on lies and distortions, the national assembly once again listened to the people, refusing to ignore the cries of the silent majority,” he said.
The government estimates about 4 million stray dogs roam Turkey’s streets and rural areas. Although many are harmless, a growing number are congregating in packs and several people have been attacked. The country’s large stray cat population is not a focus of the bill.
Hundreds of people gathered in Istanbul’s Şişhane Square issued a defiant message to the government. “Your massacre law is just a piece of paper for us,” the protest organisers told the crowd. “We will write the law on the streets. Life and solidarity, not hatred and hostility, will win.”
Animal lovers in the capital, Ankara, protested outside municipal offices. To whistles and jeers, a statement was read: “We are warning the government again and again, stop the law. Do not commit this crime against this country.”
Turkey’s main opposition party said it would seek to cancel the legislation at the supreme court.
“You have made a law that is morally, conscientiously and legally broken. You cannot wash your hands of blood,” Murat Emir, a senior deputy with the Republican People’s party, or CHP, said on Sunday night in parliament. He questioned why the bill called for healthy and unaggressive animals to be collected if they were not to be killed.
Others blamed the growth in the stray canine population on a failure to implement previous regulations, which required stray dogs to be caught, neutered, spayed and returned to where they were found.
The new legislation requires municipalities to collect stray dogs and house them in shelters to be vaccinated, neutered and spayed before making them available for adoption. Dogs that are in pain, terminally ill, or pose a health risk to humans will be euthanised.
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However, many have questioned where cash-strapped municipalities would find the money to build the necessary extra shelters.
The CHP, which won many of Turkey’s biggest municipalities in elections earlier this year, has said it will not implement the law. However, the newly passed bill introduces prison sentences of up to two years for mayors who do not carry out their duties to tackle strays, leading to suspicions that the law will be used to go after opposition mayors.
The government denies the bill would lead to a widespread culling. The justice minister, Yılmaz Tunç, told journalists last week that anyone killing strays “for no reason” would be punished.
“This is not a ‘massacre’ law. This is an ‘adoption’ law,” the agriculture and rural affairs minister, İbrahim Yumaklı, told Habertürk television in an interview.
Murat Pınar, who heads an association campaigning for measures to keep the streets safe from stray dogs, said at least 75 people, including 44 children, had been killed as a result of attacks or by traffic accidents caused by dogs since 2022. His nine-year-old daughter, Mahra, was run over by a truck after she fled from two aggressive dogs in 2022.