President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is under massive pressure in Turkey. While the lira is falling to a record low, Turkey’s failures at the Olympics and Erdoğan’s planned killing of street dogs are generating great anger.
They are part of the cityscape of many Turkish cities: street dogs and cats. Relatively few Turkish people own pets. Instead, the population in the cities takes care of dogs and cats that live on the streets. They are fed every day, mostly look well-nourished and even receive regular medical care.
In Istanbul in particular, animals are part of the cultural diversity of the metropolis; in total, there are said to be almost 300,000 dogs, who often take a nap at subway stations, ferry stations or the busy Taksim Square – in front of dog bowls that residents have placed there. Nationwide, there are said to be more than four million strays, and their numbers are multiplying rapidly.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has now declared stray dogs to be a problem. “No other industrialized country has such problems with street dogs,” he said in May, referring to the risk of rabies posed by the animals. The AKP therefore wants to push through a law that gives millions of animals a 30-day grace period. If no owners are found for the dogs by then, hundreds of thousands will be killed.
The heated dog debate in Turkey is hitting a highly polarized society. On the one hand, thousands of people are protesting this summer in cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. On the other hand, some devout Muslims see dogs as a symbol of impurity and Erdoğan blamed decadent Western elites for the problem because, according to the president, only they can afford pets. But not only the CHP, but also the head of the Islamist Yeniden Refah party, which is close to the AKP, declared: Only Allah can take the life that he has given.
The dog issue is a typical example of the Turkish president’s current dilemma. Erdoğan is in a tight spot domestically, the lira continues to plummet in August, and inflation remains high. In this situation, the president is trying to divide and distract society, for example with a debate about the killing of dogs. But this strategy is becoming less and less effective, and such maneuvers are coming back to haunt him.
However, it would be too simplistic to reduce the AKP’s current misery to just one issue. In recent polls, Erdoğan’s party is on average three percent behind the opposition CHP. Even though the AKP was politically battered, it was at least still the strongest political force nationwide. Although opinion polls in Turkey often show a large discrepancy between polls and actual results, this trend is worrying for Erdoğan.
In addition, he now ranks behind the CHP mayor of Ankara, Mansur Yavaş, in popularity polls. In July, according to the polling institute ASAL in the Political Agenda Survey, only 19 percent of Turks said that Erdoğan was their favorite politician.
This is primarily due to Turkey’s economic development and the country’s main problem: inflation. According to the Turkish Statistical Office, inflation fell slightly to 61.8 percent in July, but was still at 71 percent in June.
