Marooned dogs’ howls echo in Turkey

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 2009:
Marooning the dogs of Palau Ketam had two notorious
precedents near Istanbul, Turkey, recalled by Companion Animal
Network founder Garo Alexanian in the November/ December 2008 edition
of ANIMAL PEOPLE.
The first marooning off Istan-bul occurred at some point
prior to 1869, when Mark Twain described it in The Innocents Abroad,
along with “the howl of horror” from citizens that stopped the
practice.
The second marooning came in 1910. “This act so disturbed
the modern Turkish republic,” Alexanian wrote, “that newspaper
columnists have attributed difficult economic times in Turkey to the
curse of Turks having done it.”

Turkish legislation has since 2004 mandated neuter/return for
dog population control, but as Linda Taal of the Dutch/Turkish
animal rescue group Actiezwerfhonden noted on May 30, to this day
“More dogs are killed or dumped than caught, neutered, and returned”
to their habitat.
Taal feared that disregard of the Turkish law would increase
and that dog massacres might erupt in other nations as result of the
May 24, 2009 election of Turkish agriculture ministry deputy
undersecretary Nihat Pakdil to become European Region
secretary-general of the Organization for Animal Health. (See page
one.)