ANKARA (AP) – A Turkish bill aimed at regulating the country’s millions of stray dogs moved closer to becoming law on Wednesday as animal rights advocates feared many of them would be killed or end up in neglected, overcrowded shelters.
“Although some people persistently ignore it, Turkiye has a stray dog problem,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party proposed the bill, told legislators after a parliamentary committee approved the bill late on Tuesday. The full assembly will have a final vote in the coming days.
The government estimates that around four million stray dogs roam Turkiye’s streets and rural areas. Although many are harmless, a growing number are congregating in packs, and numerous people have been attacked in Istanbul and elsewhere. The country’s well-known large stray cat population is not a focus of the bill. Erdogan noted that stray dogs “attack children, adults, elderly people and other animals. They attack flocks of sheep and goats, they cause traffic accidents”.
The proposed legislation mandates that municipalities collect stray dogs and house them in shelters where they would be neutered and spayed.
