As stray dogs-attacks irk more people, an online platform reaches out to the public with a unique solution: A map showing places with a high concentration of stray dogs. On Havrita (a combination of Turkish words for bark and map), users can upload photos of the pack of stray dogs and pinpoint their exact location in 81 provinces of the country.
The platform is the work of a group of activists who founded it after a high school student was killed after he was mauled by 25 stray dogs in the central province of Kayseri in 2019, its spokesperson and lawyer Devrim Koçak told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Thursday.
Stray animals, including dogs and cats, are ubiquitous in Turkey, where they freely roam the streets and are fed by passersby. Though the public widely admires them, a spate of attacks by stray dogs triggered an outcry in the past two years. Victims of attacks are mostly children and though fatalities are low, the death of a young girl crushed by a truck while fleeing stray dogs last March in Antalya brought the issue under the spotlight again.
Koçak says stray dogs posed a threat, but their numbers were not clear. She says official figures show some 90,000 stray dogs in the capital Ankara, another 128,900 in Istanbul and 450,000 in Izmir. "Overall, we predict some 10 million stray dogs across Turkey." She highlighted that these are not dogs that were adopted and later abandoned,
She says the idea for a map belongs to a platform volunteer. The volunteer started pinning the locations of dog attacks on Google Maps in July 2021. It was rudimentary work until th death of Mahra Melin Pınar in Antalya in March. As the attack dominated the headlines for days and pitted animal rights activists against opponents of stray dogs roaming on the streets without any measure, Havrita was born. Currently, it is available through a browser-based application only, but the platform plans to launch apps for Android and iOS soon. It works only by the input of users who take photos of stray dogs with potential risk in any location. Most entries are from Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya and Izmir.
Koçak says they received "positive feedback" from municipalities for the map. Stray dogs are collected by crews working for municipalities primarily responsible for sterilization.
Calls for action against stray dogs that become more aggressive, especially in the heat, have found a response from authorities. Last month, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey might "pay a serious price" without sterilizing dogs and other measures. Speaking at an event in the capital Ankara in May, Erdoğan said the local municipalities should do more to shelter stray animals and criticized Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) on the issue. "Other municipalities like Konya, Beykoz district in Istanbul have superb shelters. Istanbul municipality should do the same," he said.
The president, a dog owner himself, said sterilization was "essential" to address the problem. "Turkey can pay a serious price if it does not curb the unlimited proliferation of stray animals," he said. The president noted that he instructed the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry to take necessary steps, including joint efforts with municipalities for sterilization and other measures. "Certainly, we are concerned about (potential) attacks on our children. No parents can accept it; they cannot ignore it out of their love for animals. We need to be realistic. We have to take protective steps," he said.