İyi, köpek!

Turkey is deeply conflicted. Sitting side by side on an otobüs are a bleach-blond and a head-scarf-girl, riding to who-knows-where as contrasting ideologies struggle to grab the wheel. A righteous disdain for America does not extend to consumption of American culture, and our symbolic vehicle might well bare advertisements for the latest season of Grey's Anatomy or Lost as it rolls past a Starbuck's or Burgerking.

In the streets, poised between these worlds live the dogs. Just as the head scarf has become a symbol of the Islamic Movement, the dog might well act as a tell-tail of support for the continuance of an officially secular Turkish state. Post-Muhammad interpretations both protect and shun the dog. For the dog owner, this means limited options for housing -with higher rents. For the few domestic dogs, the extra effort required to keep them bodes well. But what of the vast number of street dogs?

These animals are every where; in back allies, on the steps of the local municipalities center of governance, sleeping curled in the sun on the sidewalk, completely unremarkable, and number approximately 1 to every 100 people. Common in character, they are uniformly timid and nonthreatening, and their reaction to people bespeaks no pattern of mistreatment by the hands of strangers. One might expect a city of this size to aggressively cull feral animals from it's streets -but this is not the case. In 1911, The City's governor ordered stray dogs be gathered in mass and deported to the deserted island of Sivriad; a sever quake struck shortly there after, and the animals were quickly returned -God's opinion on the mater being clear. When an animal has been singled out for attention, it is removed to a center on one of the larger islands in the Marmara, where it is more likely to roam the streets in lazy packs than occupy a pen. I find the feral dogs to be surprisingly clean, free of pests, and usually baring the Municipal symbol on one ear:

According to a recent census, about 30% of street dogs have some loose affiliation with a person or neighborhood; often this comes as the garbage receptacle of convenience- scraps of food left piled on the street or tossed from windows quickly disappear.

While Turks abide the presence of dogs in the street, will such tolerance be extended to the political disposition of there fellow countrymen? We can only hope.