The population of street dogs in Turkey is estimated at 4 million (representative)
Ankara:
The Turkish ruling party presented a bill to parliament on Friday that aims to round up millions of stray dogs. A plan that has alarmed animal lovers who say a mass sterilization campaign would be a better solution than locking up dogs in shelters.
Under the bill proposed by the AK Party, municipalities would be tasked with taking stray animals off the streets and into shelters until they are adopted. Aggressive dogs or dogs with untreatable diseases would be put down.
“Streets are no place for dogs to live. But they have the right to live in better qualified shelters,” Abdullah Guler, chairman of the AK Party parliamentary faction, told reporters.
An earlier version of the bill, leaked to Turkish media months ago, said all street dogs could be put down within a month, but the provision was removed after public outcry, including from opposition politicians.
The population of street dogs in Turkey is estimated at 4 million, and according to the bill, 2.5 million dogs have been neutered by municipalities in the past twenty years.
According to current legislation, municipalities must castrate all street dogs, vaccinate them and, after treatment, leave them at the place where they were found.
According to the bill, there are currently 322 animal shelters with a capacity for a total of 105,000 dogs.
The bill also requires all municipalities to spend at least 0.3% of their annual budget on animal rehabilitation services and shelter construction.
Municipalities will have until 2028 to build new shelters and improve current shelters, according to the bill.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
