“I have done all I can in Istanbul” –humane patron Robert Smith
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:
ISTANBUL–The Society for Animal Protection (SHKD) shelter
and sterilization clinic in the aqueduct district near Istanbul is
soon to be closed, due to neighborhood objections to barking plus
lack of political and economic support.
The facility was toured by delegates to the 2001
International Companion Animal Welfare Conference, along with the
Natural Dog Shelter at the sprawling Kemerburgaz Rubbish Dump Project
several miles away.
The landlord who leased the site to SHKD wants to reclaim the
land for development, now that upscale housing developments have
come up all around. British clothing manufacturer Robert Smith, the
major funder of the shelter since it opened in 1998, is frustrated
and ready to leave, wanting only time to accommodate all the
resident dogs and cats.
“We have reduced the number of dogs still there to about
250,” Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Several hundred–at a guess
400-500 in the year 2003–have been sent to Germany, Holland and
Austria for rehoming. About 20 sick or injured dogs have been put
to sleep,” Smith said.
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2003:
“I have done all I can in Istanbul” –humane patron Robert Smith
ISTANBUL–The Society for Animal Protection (SHKD) shelter
and sterilization clinic in the aqueduct district near Istanbul is
soon to be closed, due to neighborhood objections to barking plus
lack of political and economic support.
The facility was toured by delegates to the 2001
International Companion Animal Welfare Conference, along with the
Natural Dog Shelter at the sprawling Kemerburgaz Rubbish Dump Project
several miles away.
The landlord who leased the site to SHKD wants to reclaim the
land for development, now that upscale housing developments have
come up all around. British clothing manufacturer Robert Smith, the
major funder of the shelter since it opened in 1998, is frustrated
and ready to leave, wanting only time to accommodate all the
resident dogs and cats.
“We have reduced the number of dogs still there to about
250,” Smith told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “Several hundred–at a guess
400-500 in the year 2003–have been sent to Germany, Holland and
Austria for rehoming. About 20 sick or injured dogs have been put
to sleep,” Smith said.
Smith continues to sponsor the Natural Dog Shelter, profiled
in the July/August 2001 edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE, but the resident
dog population has dwindled, between exports for rehoming and
attrition.
“In our open forest shelter there are about 80 free dogs,”
Smith explained. “They are fed at the far end from the entrance,
and are otherwise free to roam outside in the (fenced) forest,”
which is actually a tree plantation intended to stabilize the soil.
“They all choose to stick around the people, rather than escape and
wander into the road or back to the city. So that is working well so
far.
“We have subdivided the forest shelter further into 19
areas,” since the ICAWC visit, Smith added, “so there is no longer
any problem with dog fights or with separating incompatible dogs. We
are hoping to soon secure some land on which to build a new neutering
clinic–or to which we can move our existing portable buildings,”
Smith continued. “However I do not intend to repeat the same mistake
of creating a prison camp for dogs. The new clinic will have
recuperation space only plus room for a maximum of 100 dogs suitable
for rehoming in Europe.
“My intention and hope,” Smith declared, “is to keep SHKD
going as a consultancy and lobbying organization, ready for the day,
if it ever comes, that someone in the Turkish government has the
political will and initiative to come to grips with the stray dog
problem. I cannot afford to continue to pay $30,000 per month to run
canine prison camps. Nor can I afford to continue to pay
single-handedly for a free neutering and vaccination service for half
of Istanbul. However, it would be a pity to lose the veterinary and
dog handling expertise of our staff. It is important that we are
able to train vets to work in Turkey and abroad.
“So we will only do operations free of charge for
municipalities which pay us in one way or another, or for
individuals who give donations or help us. The exceptions will be
those areas we have already covered intensively, such as Gokturk and
various villages outside Istanbul,” Smith said, intending that
disengaging SHKD from providing extensive free services will induce
communities to provide and properly fund similar services.
“In general it would probably be true to say that we have got
the message across to most of the myriad arms of local and central
government, but not all, that killing dogs is futile,” Smith
observed. “They have progressed from sporadic poisoning campaigns to
‘catch and incarcerate,’ which is of course expensive and equally
futile. The danger is that dogs will simply starve to death in badly
managed city concentration camps. We managed one in Bakirkoy for over
a year,” to ensure that the dogs there got proper care. “It cost me
a fortune because the municipality paid late or never, and made our
lives hell with obstruction and interference. So we now have to get
them to progress from ‘catch and incarcerate’ to ‘neuter and return,’
following the successful models of street dog sterilization pursued
in Costa Rica, parts of India, and Bali.
“I feel I have done all I can in Istanbul,” Smith concluded,
“and that I have more chance of demonstrating the efficacy of ‘neuter
and return’ in small towns in Romania,” where Smith also supports
many humane projects, “than I do with the lethargic and unwieldy
system of government in Istanbul.
“It is also prohibitively expensive to employ people legally
in Turkey,” Smith noted, “to look after stray dogs,” a legacy of
the prejudice against dogs common in nations where rabies was
recently endemic and still occurs when vaccination campaigns are
insufficiently aggressive.
