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wounds and prepared straw mats and even small doghouses for their canine neighbors. No
less an establishment than the legendary Pera Palas, the best hotel, cared for the dogs and
fed them regularly. Edmondo De Amicis, an Italian traveler whose book Constantinople re-
cords his impressions of the city in the mid-19th century, went so far as to describe Istanbul
as a “giant kennel.” And Grigor Yakob Basmajean, an Orientalist born in Edirne, claimed in
1890 that no other city in the world had as many dogs as the metropolis on the Bosporus.
The dogs were so omnipresent that streetcar employees had to drive them from the tracks
with long sticks so the horse-drawn wagons could pass through. Passersby could often stop
to watch them fighting with one another. Their howling could be heard all night; there were
somanydogsthattheirvoicesblendedintoaconstant sound“like thequakingoffrogsinthe
distance,” as one observer vividly described. It sounds like the dogs, not the authorities, set
the tone. In popular shadow-puppet plays, dogs were compared to the poor.
Dealings with canines were always marked by ambivalence. Although dogs formed part
of a romantic cityscape, caricatures from the Ottoman period depict them as threats to be
stopped, along with cholera, crime, and women in European clothing. Again and again, at-
tempts were made to catch them and remove them from the city. In the late 19th century,
Sultan Abdülaziz decreed that the dogs should be rounded up and deported to Hayirsiz, an
island of barren, steep cliffs in the Sea of Marmara. Sivriada, a tiny island to which Byzan-
tine rulers once banished criminals, made headlines in 1911 when the governor of Istanbul
releasedtensofthousandsofdogsthere.Ayellowedpostcardshowshundredsofdogsonthe
beach; their voices could be heard even at great distances. However, an earthquake that oc-
curred shortly thereafter was taken as a sign of God's displeasure, and the dogs were brought
back.
Attempts to stem the plague of dogs in the city continued, with more or less success. Their
presence was always seen as a sign that the city could not impose order and guarantee the
safetyofresidents.CitieslikeNewYorkandParis,wheretheproblemwasundercontrol,be-
came role models. Shortly after the revolution, Mary Mills Patrick, an American who taught
at Istanbul's Woman's College, thanked the new Turkish regime for its efforts in this area;
after all, a civilized city was no place for packs of dogs. But even in the decades that fol-
lowed, the dogs never completely disappeared. Occasional efforts to eliminate them were
seen as acts of barbarism. Until 2004, when a law to protect the animals was finally passed,
meatballs laced withstrychnine werenotuncommon.Buttodaysuchdraconian measures are
things of the past.
Real change will only come once new solutions for the city's trash problem are found and
garbage is no longer simply placed on the curb, as it is in many neighborhoods today. Then
things will be tough for the dogs. Animal protection activists today call for a concerted effort
tocatch the dogs,vaccinate them against rabies, sterilize them, andtag them before releasing
them back into their territory. The World Health Organization also recommends this strategy.
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