Animal
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Animal
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Newsletter - Animal Writes � sm
30 January 2000 Issue

Slaughter of Dogs In Turkey
Ozden
Source: [email protected] (ebozden)

[Editor's Note: The following letter is self-explanatory, but we are printing it as is, because we felt that "Americanizing" it would take out some of the poignancy of this situation. Help is desperately needed, but we believe it will take a concerted effort by national groups to get the ball rolling. If this touches your heart like it touched ours, let the national animal protection organizations you support know that you want them to make this a priority. There must be a solution.]

Apologize me for writing you a long letter and take your time but I can't do anything more after this time. Yesterday, in Turkey, ministry of agriculture published an order to all the municipalities that, in case of any rabies doubt in a region, all the dogs in that region must be killed !! This is being done in Turkey since a month but this one is the first official and legal published order. Since yesterday all the TV channels are broadcasting dogs killed by officials and people themselves. One of the images was; a child was putting his arms around his dog ( he was taking care a dog living in the street ), crying and saying "I know you will kill her, don't do please", but the people took the dog, and in front of him, while the dog was looking at their faces and swinging her tail, they shot her with guns. These are what we are watching on TV's nowadays.

The worst thing is, the common people, especially who lives in rural and villages have all taken their pistols and shooting dogs as hunting parties. The hunters also started to do this with pleasure. As two TV channels ( channel ATV and TGRT ) and a newspaper ( Sabah ) is constantly publishing since a month that rabies is great danger, dont come near any dog in the street, they may all have rabies, all the dogs in the streets must be killed, your children are in danger, don' t give our taxes to vaccinating dogs, just kill them, the people who reads and watches them started to hate all dogs. One who feeds dogs yesterday around his home, now shooting them with guns.

This is the worst thing of all. The number of rabies cases are the same with last years, but these TV's ( nobody knows why ) and governors are making a great campaign of fear. Maybe this may help, Turkish government is afraid of its tourism earnings. When some foreign news comes as foreign newspapers and TV's broadcasts these, and an afraid of protest to come to Turkey arises, all tourism companies in Turkey are saying the government to stop killing them, at least doing these latently. Maybe you can influence some of your big tourism companies to declare that, our people will not come Turkey if you do insist on killing dogs.

Government says they want to finish this problem urgently and collecting and vaccinating them will not be so, but we can't make them understand that killing is not a solution as you can't kill them all and after some years again there will be thousands of dogs in the streets. They will not do anything after the number minimizes and wait for years and then will start this killing campaign again. Somebody must stress them the right solution. Sorry for taking your time, but we don't know what to do more.

Go on to Pet Theft in Michigan and Indiana
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