Uproar in Turkey Over Slain Stray Dogs

The charges follow the recent discovery of hundreds of dead dogs in a garbage dump in Ankara's Mamak district, whose mayor belongs to the ruling Justice and Development Party. Animal rights campaigners allege the dogs were poisoned or shot dead by teams of municipal workers whose job is to curb the city's large population of strays.

Under an animal rights law adopted in 2004 as part of this predominantly Muslim nation's efforts to join the European Union, municipalities are to gather strays and neuter and inoculate them against rabies. They can then either tag them and set them loose or place them in government-run shelters.

"Instead, they just kill them on the streets," Fersun Isitman, a rights campaigner, said.

On Wednesday, hundreds of people from across the country gathered with their pets in Ankara's Tandogan square to protest the killings.

Many carried pictures of the dogs found at Mamak captioned, "Allah created us as well."

"Such barbarism violates the spirit of Islam," said Hatice Uysal, a homemaker wearing a head scarf. "It's hard to imagine Turkey joining the EU under these circumstances."

"Turkey's image in Europe is bad enough already with widespread violence against women, human rights abuses and child labor," said Sibel Kekilli, an internationally acclaimed German film star of Turkish descent.

Opposition lawmaker Yilmaz Ates, who took part in the rally, said the Islam-rooted national government had yet to respond to his party's written demand that it take legal action against municipalities alleged to be responsible for the killings. "If such horrors occur in the capital, one can only guess what goes on in the rest of the country," he said.

Allegations that municipal workers were hunting and killing strays surfaced last month when Burcu Isikalp, a young veterinarian, went looking for seven dogs she had been caring for near her home. Isikalp said that neighbors told her they saw municipal workers take the strays away.

She headed for the Mamak dump, Ankara's largest, where she found one of the strays, Johnny, with hundreds of other dogs. "They were all dead, stacked in large pits," Isikalp said in a recent interview.