Turkey is a paradise for homeless animals because there are food and water bowls for them on the street, and four-legged neighbors can always count on the affection of passers-by. But not everyone lives equally well.

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Cats, for example, are loved by everyone, and dogs often have to prove that they too deserve a kind word. At the end of November, Turkish social networks were abuzz with the news that an 82-year-old resident of Istanbul had his leg amputated after being attacked by a street dog.

The tragedy has once again raised the issue of the growing population of homeless animals in cities. NEWS.ru understands how dogs live in the country’s main metropolis, Istanbul, and what awaits them in the future.

At the end of two eras
Constantinople was full of dogs; There were so many of them that cars could hardly pass through the road. It was decided to take them to the islands,” wrote the French prose writer and journalist Théophile Gauthier in his book Journey to the East in the 19th century.

Since then, the city has changed a lot, but street dogs remain the same respected residents of the historic capital. Today, they can be heard barking at any time of day and almost anywhere. And although no one counted dogs in Istanbul, but, according to some very approximate data, together with street cats, their number reached 600 thousand individuals.

Now, as in the 19th century, Turks again do not know how to deal with the growing population of street dogs, which many fear. It’s understandable – it can be difficult to overcome fear when, late at night, a passing dog suddenly starts barking loudly. And at such moments, for some reason, it always seems that the cause of the animal’s anxiety lies within you.

Perhaps it would not be so scary if it were not for the impressive size of local “balls”, more precisely, “dumans” (the most popular dog in Turkey is named “duman”, i.e. “smoke”). In general, the level of Istanbul dogs is almost the main shock for Russians who have just arrived in the city.

Yes, I won’t go there, I say, they have… Yes, they are not dogs, but wolfhounds. Everything here is somehow huge, what do they feed them here? No, look at the seagulls, a kind of pterodactyl, – well-known IT specialist Vladimir refused to pass two dogs in the first days of his arrival in Istanbul.