Activists warn of tourism boycott as Turkey pushes through controversial stray dog bill

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The outcry over a proposed law that could potentially lead to the mass culling of stray cats and dogs has spread beyond Turkey’s borders with a demonstration planned to be held on Sunday in central London’s Piccadilly Circus. Dominic Dyer, a prominent British animal rights campaigner, will be speaking at the event that will kick off at 1 p.m. local time. The event is being organized by a group of Turkish animal rights campaigners living in the UK and is aimed at drawing attention to the plight of Turkish street animals.

Dyer warned that Turkey’s tourism industry that was worth an estimated $64 billion in 2023 could be hurt as holiday-makers respond to growing calls to boycott the country. Many see well fed street dogs and cats at the resorts where they stay and it becomes part of their positive experience of Turkey, Dyer noted.

“As images of dogs being shot, of being poisoned and being clubbed to death and dumped in large numbers begin to emerge, tourists will vote with their feet,” Dyer told Al-Monitor. "If the law is adopted we could witness the biggest mass culling of stray dogs and cats in post-war Europe,” Dyer added.

Brigitte Bardot, the iconic French movie star and passionate promoter of animal welfare, has joined in the appeals with a letter addressed to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appealing for the bill to be shelved. “Turkey has been seen until now as a model of compassion for stray cats and dogs, living harmoniously with humans,” Bardot wrote. She was referring to the current practice of catching, neutering and chipping stray dogs then letting them roam free again. "Do not let Turkey become a nation disliked and criticized for its indifference and cruelty to these sensitive beings, our most faithful companions,” Bardot entreated.

Erdogan has vowed to pass the bill that was passed by a parliamentary committee on Tuesday but has yet to be put before the full parliament. “Turkey has a stray dog problem … These stray dogs attack children, adults, elderly people and other animals,” Erdogan told members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the parliament. “We will make our streets safe by signing the draft into law.”

Pressure to crack down on the stray population grew after a 10-year-old girl was killed by an oncoming vehicle as she sought to flee a pack of street dogs in 2022. More than 100 people, half of them children, have perished since then as a result of canine attacks or road accidents caused by them, according to a report released in June by the Safe Streets and Defense of the Right Life Association that was founded by the girl’s parents.

While there is broad consensus that the issue needs to be tackled, the idea of euthanizing dogs en masse is abhorred by a majority of Turks, according to recent opinion polls.

Political agenda

The AKP and its nationalist allies hold enough seats in the 600-seat chamber to approve the bill, which opposition members charge is aimed principally at squeezing hundreds of municipalities that are under their control, including Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, and the capital, Ankara which the pro-secular main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) wrested from the AKP in 2019. The AKP suffered a further drubbing in the local elections this March, with the CHP outperforming the ruling Islamists for the first time since the AKP took power in 2002 and adding a string of new municipalities to its pack.

The government could deploy the highly politicized courts against opposition parties, nearly all of which have vowed to not implement the bill. Its scope was, nonetheless, narrowed following a strong public backlash in Turkey. The updated version calls for collecting strays, neutering them and euthanizing those that pose a threat to human and animal life, are terminally ill or risk spreading infectious diseases. However, there are nowhere near enough shelters to house them, with capacity estimated at around 105,000 for a population of 4 million street dogs. It’s unclear how local administrations could raise the funds to build more and fast enough. Under the draft law, municipality officials who fail to fulfill its terms could face jail sentences of up to two years.

It also remains unclear what immediate impact, if any, foreign pressure will have on the government’s determination to ram the law through. Dyer recalled that Turkish rescue dogs and others flown in from different parts of the world helped save hundreds of lives in the wake of the massive earthquakes in February 2023 that ripped through Turkey’s southern region, killing more than 50,000 people.  

Turkey’s tourism industry is already suffering from the effects of high inflation running at an average annual 70% that has left many prime destinations empty this season. No longer able to afford a holiday at home, Turkish tourists are going to neighboring Greece in droves under a new express visa scheme that was set up in April and covers the islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Rhodes. Didem Taman, a Turkish pensioner in Istanbul who went to the Aegean coastal resort of Assos this month, said her hotel was “deserted.” 

“Last year, it was so crowded, if you dropped a needle it would not have fallen to the ground,” Taman told Al-Monitor. “Even the foreigners haven’t come.”