For centuries these strays have been looked after and respected as part of Turkish culture. Now they’ve been dragged into the president’s culture wars
When I first moved to Istanbul in 2010, knowing almost no one and grappling with an unfamiliar language, it was the local street dogs who first drew me into my new life. Chico, an elderly alsatian, and Herkül, a labrador mongrel, lived on a corner near my apartment where they watched the life of the neighbourhood pass by with a vigilant serenity.
Locals fed them, and I learned to my amazement that some even clubbed together to pay the dogs’ vet bills if they were sick or injured. Greeting them each day became a ritual, and when I first went to a pet shop to buy treats, using my halting Turkish to explain that I was getting them “for dogs, but not my dogs”, the shopkeeper replied: “Ahh, for the street dogs,” as though nothing were more natural.
Alexander Christie-Miller is a writer and journalist, and author of To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul