(A stray dog in Turkey. Image source: Getty Images)

In 2021 a stray dog named Boji made world headlines for traveling almost 19 miles a day on ferries, trams, and the metro in Istanbul, Turkey. Adoring fans including women in long coats and headscarves, students sporting tattoos and piercings, bearded men wearing prayer caps, and children of all ages posted thousands of selfies with him on social media. Boji appeared universally loved, as did stray animals more broadly, judging by the bowls of food and water that people already left out across Istanbul.

But the reality is much less straightforward. Canines have a complicated history in Turkey and in Islam. Some people love dogs like substitute children while others fear them as devils, but the reasons behind this division are not as simple as either/or. Attitudes towards dogs are informed by a range of factors, including religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, and political leanings. These identifiers are not absolutes though. Consequently, differing beliefs about dogs in Islam generally, and in Turkey specifically, coexist, intersect, and even counter one another.

Dogs in Islamic Jurisprudence

Although Turkey is a secular state, Islam informs many areas of daily life. But Islam is not a monolith. It consists of distinct schools of thought, sharing core beliefs but differing in many ways. The predominate form of Islam in Turkey is Sunni, and Sunni Muslims, like all Muslims, take the Koran as their religious canon. The Koran mentions dogs, but it does not categorically state if they are good or impure, as it does with swine and vultures—both of which the Koran places in the “impure” category. Yet throughout history, some Muslim societies have viewed dogs with suspicion.

Traditionally, everyday practices pertaining to dogs in Muslim societies are largely determined by Islamic jurisprudence. This is the process whereby Muslim scholars (jurists) study and interpret divine law as revealed in the Koran and sunnah, the deeds of Muhammed and in hadith, reports of his words and actions. They then make judgements about how people should deal with various situations.

“You see some statements that dogs are impure,” says Alan Mikhail, a Professor of History at Yale University who specializes in the early modern Muslim world in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. “That they’re dirty, specifically their saliva is a problem. They touch carcasses of other animals with their mouths. They sometimes eat garbage.”

But Mikhail notes that others found that dogs had admirable traits. “You also have another body of knowledge that talks about how they’re extremely loyal; they’re useful in hunting and for security purposes,” Mikhail says. These contradictory debates stretch back centuries and influence people’s attitudes towards canines today. 

Meanings in Dogs’ Drool

Ninth century religious intellectual Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Ismail al-Bukhari is regarded as one of the most important hadith scholars in the history of Sunni Islam. He wrote, “If a dog drinks from the utensil of anyone of you it is essential to wash it seven times.” This hadith refers to the Muslim practice of washing before prayers in order to be physically and ritually pure. In al-Bukhari’s school of thought, dogs are najis, that is essentially unclean and thus ritually impure. Therefore, if a dog drinks from the same bowl a believer uses for their ablutions, the dog’s saliva nullifies their ritual purity.

Conversely, 17^th century Cairo-born scholar Nur al-Din Abu al-Irshad ‘Ali ibn Muhammad Zayn al-‘Abidin ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ajhuri held that like everything found in nature, dogs were essentially pure. After all, al-Ajhuri contended, the Prophet himself had prayed in the presence of dogs. More importantly, he argued, the religious canon contains no specific reference to dogs’ wet mouths, and therefore saliva was simply part of a dog’s natural state.

(An 18th century drawing from an unknown artist of an Ottoman man feeding stray cats and dogs. Source: Daily Sabah)

There are numerous antithetical and complex arguments in the different schools of Islamic jurisprudence about dog’s drool and if it is pure. But, as Mikhail points out, “Prescriptive literature in any culture … doesn’t explain exactly how people lived with dogs.” Rules are one thing, and everyday life another. Islamic jurisprudence and state legislation can be different to actual practices.

Who’s a Good Boy? Dogs in Everyday Muslim Life

Many historical eye witness accounts about dogs in Turkey come from foreign visitors to Istanbul. Few ventured into rural Turkish communities where, as is still the case now, a dog’s value lies in the way it maintains the economic interests of its owners by keeping their flocks safe from attack. They are fitted with spiked metal collars and their ears cut short so wolves cannot bite into them to use as a lever to bring the dog down.

On the surface, city dogs seem better treated. Just as Mikhail found in Ottoman Egypt where, “mosques [were] putting out water for dogs, people throwing out scraps for food,” in Ottoman Istanbul, Flemish diplomat Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq saw kennels and water troughs being left out for dogs in the mid-16^th century. The following century, French traveler Jean de Thévenot heard of wealthy citizens bequeathing funds to religious foundations that looked after dogs. In the early 19^th century, Irish clergyman and writer Robert Walsh noted how certain butchers sold meat only for consumption by street animals. All of them observed that street dogs, far from being ownerless, collectively “belonged” to the neighborhoods where they lived.

This does not mean individual Turks had affective relationships with dogs as they do with domestic pets today. Dogs had a clear role: keep urban centers free of waste by eating garbage, in turn keeping the rodent population in check. Unfortunately, this function was to be their undoing.

Reframing Attitudes towards Dogs in the Late Ottoman Period

The early 1800s were when, for the first time, “people connected garbage with disease and therefore dogs who ate the garbage, as the bearers of those diseases,” says Mikhail. In Turkey questions about dogs shifted from ritual purity to a focus on hygiene at a time when the Ottoman central government was grappling with internal and international challenges to its power. Determined to redress the situation and replace existing Ottoman and religious customs with secular methods to preserve their rule, they undertook a series of modernizing projects known as the Tanzimat reforms between 1839 and 1876.

Establishing municipal organizations in Istanbul was one of them. Council employees replaced dogs as garbage collectors. Canines were identified as possible disease vectors and had to go. Over the years, various measures to eradicate them, such as rounding up or poisoning strays, were unsuccessful. Their barking, excrement, and attacks on humans, including foreigners, symbolized ongoing government failures.

In 1909 Abdullah Cevdet, a founding member of İttihat ve Terakki (Committee of Union and Progress), part of the reformist Young Turks movement, wrote a pamphlet declaring that dogs in the city endangered cleanliness, harmony, and order. Their continued presence, Cevdet railed, was symptomatic of an outmoded Ottoman system of rule over an uneducated population blindly following religious superstitions that saw animals living alongside humans unchecked. In a truly modern society, dogs existed only as police and working animals or pets.

Not long afterwards, the Young Turks seized power. The new leaders ordered approximately 60,000-80,000 street dogs be rounded up and removed to the Topkapı district of Istanbul. But the number of cages was insufficient and contained dogs started to break free. Various arrangements to deal with them fell through, so in June of 1910 the captives were transported to Oxia (Sivriada in Turkish), a small barren island in the Sea of Marmara. (A similar attempt to eradicate dogs in the 19^th century failed when the boat capsized in a storm and the dogs swam back. This time they were not so lucky.) The number of dogs dumped on the island is estimated between 30,000-60,000. Left to fend for themselves, the dogs eventually turned on one another or died of starvation and thirst. Reports from the time said their barking and howling could be heard all the way back to Istanbul. Ever since then, the island has been called Hayırsızada, “inauspicious island.”

Dogs in Present-Day Turkey: Beloved Pets and Unwanted Strays

More than one hundred years later, dogs still populate the streets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities. Opinions about them vary, largely depending on an individual’s relationship to Islam. Naturally, Turks are not a monolith. Some are devout; others are cultural Muslims who limit their practices to specific events like births or deaths; some are atheists; others fall into none of these categories.

Regardless of their religiosity, many in Turkey quote the hadith, “Angels do not enter a home where dogs, pictures, and statues are found” to explain their refusal to have dogs in the house. Some go even further, arguing that dogs are mekruh, literally meaning something abominable or revolting. While not explicitly forbidden, having a canine inside one’s home is not culturally desirable.

However, contradictions thrive in Turkey, and many Turks do keep dogs as pets. Glass artist and Istanbul resident Felekşan Onar has been a dog owner for more than 20 years. She lives in her house on a complex with two pet dogs. “When we moved here,” she says, “there used to be a big dump site, a çöplük, the main çöplük of Istanbul. Most of the street dogs or dogs that were abandoned were there.” Following orders to clear the streets and overcrowded shelters, municipal workers transported countless dogs there, as did families no longer financially able or willing to care for their pets.

Nowadays, dogs are left on the outskirts of Istanbul, often in newer areas populated by people from low socioeconomic backgrounds whose only interaction with canines is being terrorized by menacing packs in the early hours as they wait for a bus or walking home late at night.

Growing up, Onar’s family would never allow a dog into their home. “They believe all living creatures are sacred [but] when I was a little girl living in Şöke,” she remembers, “they believed these animals bring bacteria into the house, typhus, or cholera. That you could get sick having dogs or cats. At the time I think this was the case”.

Onar continues: “When I started having these pets my mother and father were worried about it. But over the years they understood they were different than the stray dog on the street.”

Now, when Onar’s mom visits, she accepts that her daughter has dogs, although “she’s not too keen on petting them.”

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Like Onar, many other Turks, no matter their degree of faith, value dogs for the companionship, affection, and love they provide. Similarly, despite having reservations about stray dogs, they nonetheless champion their right to live on the streets.

Permission for strays to live on the streets was made law in 2004 in the country’s first Animal Protection Bill Law, No 5199. As animal rights lawyer Barış Karlı, one of the founding members of Hayvanlara Adalet Derneği (HAD, Animal Rights Association), explains, it allowed all street animals “to continue living where they were born, where they grew up, where they currently live.” The Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party) headed by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan passed the law that mandated the street dog population be controlled through the catch-neuter-vaccinate-return (CNVR) method, undertaken by the municipalities. Euthanasia was banned unless a dog was aggressive and unable to be rehabilitated, or suffering from a terminal illness or incurable disease.

In many areas however, rather than implement CNVR, it was cheaper for municipalities to continue dumping strays. Instances of animal cruelty were common. Two of the most publicized concerned a government worker beating a shelter dog to death with a shovel, and a black puppy found in a forest in June 2018, with all its legs and tail cut off. Despite their best efforts, vets were unable to save the pup.

The ensuing public outrage brought to light the fact that dogs were classified under existing laws as property, “commodities” as Karlı puts it. After numerous protests and parliamentary sessions, a bill passed in July 2021 classifying animals as sentient beings. It became a criminal offense to injure or kill them, punishable with prison time. The CNVR system remained in place but, Karlı points out, with no legislative provision to oversee whether it was actually being implemented.

In December 2021, Turkish media reported on a series of pit bull attacks on children. President Erdoğan quickly called for stray dogs to be put into shelters, even though the dogs in question were pets. Confronted with that fact, he chastised pet owners, calling them “White Turks,” meaning secular left-leaning elites, and demanded they look after their animals. This attempt to polarize the population backfired. Thousands of people of varying religious persuasions replaced their social media headshots with photos of their dogs, cats, and rabbits to protest the president’s claim that pets were dangerous.

The situation became more complex when stray dogs mauled a boy on his way to school in December 2023. Erdoğan pledged action. Details of a new law pertaining to street dogs were leaked to the media in early 2024 and Erdoğan insisted changes were necessary to combat an increase in rabies, deaths, and injuries from dog attacks. The Turkish Veterinary Association produced statistics showing animal-borne rabies was decreasing and best controlled through CNVR programs, already legislated under the 2004 law. Erdoğan quickly sidestepped this, turning the spotlight to a report released by pro-government conservative Güvenli Sokaklar ve Yaşam Hakkını Savunma Derneği (Safe Streets and Defense of the Right to Life Association) to make his case. In figures published online in August 2023, they claim more than 100 people, including 50 children, have died since 2022 from dog attacks or from being hit by cars when fleeing from stray dogs. No contemporaneous government records were proffered, making verification impossible.

The proposed law contains changes that animal activists find disturbing. In particular, says Karlı, they’re concerned by the proposal to categorize animals as either “owned” or “ownerless.” “Owned” animals must be microchipped, kept under control, and have a responsible human. The latter fail to meet those criteria. “In Turkey,” Karlı says, “it is not logical to divide animals as owned and ownerless. We can divide them as those living at home and those living on the streets. Animals living on the streets are the animals of the whole neighborhood. They are fed by different shopkeepers, they greet people living in different buildings, and their health needs are monitored and met by these people. We cannot characterize these animals as ownerless just because they live on the street.”

The most alarming change, Karlı says, is that under the new law, “ownerless animals are not allowed to live in the places where they already lived (streets, parks, etc.).” After being caught, neutered, and vaccinated, strays will be housed in Agriculture and Forestry Ministry registered shelters. An earlier provision ordered those not adopted in 30 days be killed, but it was removed after public outcry. The final version explicitly bans removing or releasing dogs from shelters, meaning they must remain there until they are adopted or die. But aggressive or incurably ill dogs will be put down.

There are currently 322 animal shelters across Turkey with a capacity for 105,000 dogs. The 2021 bill mandated every municipality with a population over 75,000 to build a shelter by the end of 2022. Yet as of August 2024, “eighty percent of municipalities have neither established temporary animal care centers nor employed veterinarians,” Karlı says. The new law gives them until 2028 to construct new shelters and improve existing ones, many of which lack basic facilities, including veterinary services.

(Istanbul residents protest the bill to remove stray dogs from the street in June 2024. Source: Mehmet Kacmaz/Getty Images)

To date, only 3,000 municipal vets are employed across Turkey, far fewer than needed. And Karlı says, “we do not expect the [new] law will change anything in this regard. Municipalities that did not employ veterinarians or did not neuter animals in the past will continue not doing so, and they will continue killing animals behind closed doors as they did in the past. Permission to investigate these issues has never been granted.”

Given the estimated four million stray dogs in Turkey, many are calling this a massacre law.

Dogs as Political Pawns

The Turkish parliament passed the new law on stray dogs on July 30, 2024. That same month, inflation was officially reported to have dropped to 61.78%, down by around 10%, although the true annual rate is believed to be much higher. Turks from all walks of life are suffering. Salaries lose value even before being paid while grocery prices and rents rise weekly. Many people see the oppression of street dogs as mirroring their own.

Animal lovers from across a range of social strata, religious philosophies, and political affiliations have vowed to continue to fight for the rights of strays in Turkey. They argue, as does Karlı, that “there are and will continue to be dogs on the streets”.

As for Boji, his popularity and fame on Instagram continued to grow, but his presence in real life was never fully accepted. In November 2021 he was accused of befouling a tram seat. But after an investigation, it turned out he’d been framed. Video evidence showed a man board the said tram, take a plastic bag containing canine excrement from his pocket, and leave it on the seat. Now, Boji lives with Ömer Koç, chair of Koç Holding, Turkey’s largest industrial conglomerate, who adopted the gentle giant for his own safety.

Lisa Morrow is an Australian-born author and travel writer who has lived in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey for more than 15 years. She has a Masters’ Degree in Sociology, has written five books on Turkey, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Smart Set, Meanjin, CNN Travel, and elsewhere.