Sweeping pro-animal bill in Turkey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2003:

ANKARA, Turkey–The Parliamentary Domestic Affairs
Commission on January 15, 2003, adopted a draft national animal
protection bill which would provide prison terms for animal torture,
allowing animals to starve, and bestiality; would prohibit all
forms of animal fighting; would prohibit killing animals by
electrocution, cervical dislocation, drowning, burning, and
boiling; would forbid training animals by methods that cause
avoidable injury or distress; and would prohibit killing animals for
population control unless necessary to halt the spread of an epidemic.
The draft bill would require drivers to make every reasonable
effort to avoid injuring animals on the road, and to take any
animals they hit to a veterinarian and pay for the necessary
treatment.
Only licensed veterinarians would be permitted to perform euthanasia.
Vets would be directed to use the least painful method available of
killing an animal.
The draft bill would form a national animal protection
foundation, and would create animal protection boards in each
province, under the deputy governors.
As drafted, the bill would be perhaps the most comprehensive and
progressive animal protection statute on the books of any nation.
Whether it can gain enough support to pass into law without
substantial amendment remains to be seen.