At the top of a hill, the site overlooked the rolling, agricultural countryside of Nigde, a gray Anatolian city, devoid of charm and color, flanked by massive houses standing under the intense sun of Turkey's deep south. A simple sign, erected at the edge of the track by the town hall, stated "animal cemetery." There was nothing there but a few mounds of earth and trench-like holes. At the bottom of one of them, a dog with a broken neck lay under a shovelful of white limestone. The blood was still bright red. All around, it was possible to make out the outlines of other bodies leveled by the rubble.
It was here that two animal rights activists, Emine and Melis (their first names have been changed), filmed mayoral officials dropping off half a dozen dogs on August 6. Inert bodies in plastic bags abandoned in the early hours of the morning. The images posted on social media immediately caused a stir. They were just the latest in a series of photos of mass dog graves popping up all over the country: Altindag, a district of Ankara; Edirne, in Thrace; Tokat, in the Black Sea region; Sanliurfa, in the south; and Uzunköprü, a small town near Bulgaria.
Above all, these images confirmed the fears of animal rights activists, who had opposed the adoption on July 30 of a controversial law aimed at regulating the population of stray dogs, of which there are four million throughout the country, according to the authorities. The law, backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic nationalist ruling coalition, obliges municipalities to take in stray dogs and house them in shelters, where they will be vaccinated and sterilized before being offered for adoption. Above all, it requires the euthanasia of dogs considered to be "sick" or "aggressive," under procedures yet to be defined.
Opponents of the law see it as a form of "license to kill," as author and poet Ahmet Ümit wrote. "As there are not enough places in the shelters, a route has been opened for slaughter," claimed veterinarian Turkan Ceylan, on the day the law was passed. "We animal rights activists know very well that this means death." Nationwide, Turkey has a total of 322 shelters, with a capacity of just 105,000 dogs. In the cities, especially in the outskirts of large urban centers and medium-sized towns, street dogs, as they are called, are part of everyday life and even part of the collective imagination. Ever since the first tourist guide books appeared in the 19th century, dogs have been mentioned either under the heading "nuisance" or "curiosity."
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