The street dog population in Türkiye is estimated at 4 million (Representational)
Ankara:
Turkey’s ruling party introduced 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 castration campaign would be a better solution than locking them up. dogs in shelters.
According to the bill proposed by the AK party, municipalities would be responsible for removing stray animals and placing them in shelters until they are adopted. Dogs that were aggressive or had intractable illnesses would be put down.
“The streets are not a space for dogs to live. But they have the right to live in more qualified shelters,” Abdullah Guler, chairman of the AK party parliamentary group, told journalists.
An earlier version of the bill, which was leaked to Turkish media months ago, said all stray dogs could be slaughtered within a month, but the provision was removed after public protests, including from opposition politicians.
The street dog population in Turkey is estimated at 4 million, and 2.5 million dogs have been neutered in the last 20 years by municipalities, according to the bill.
According to current legislation, municipalities must neuter and vaccinate all stray dogs and leave them where they were found after treatment.
There are currently 322 animal shelters with the capacity to house a total of 105,000 dogs, according to the project.
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 time until 2028 to build new shelters and improve current ones, the project says.
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