Dog Desk Animal Action monitors developments affecting street dogs across Türkiye, including municipal collection programmes, shelters and natural living areas. As part of that work, we routinely examine photographs and video circulating online where they appear to document conditions affecting dogs. We also work with people on the ground & intervene where we can.

This week, distressing footage began circulating internationally showing severely emaciated dogs inside a fenced municipal facility. The footage was identified as having been recorded at Boyabat Municipal Shelter in Sinop during summer 2026.

We attempted to verify that attribution. We could not.

No original source accompanied the footage. We could find no contemporary source connecting this particular video to Boyabat or Sinop and no evidence establishing when the short version had actually been recorded.

The conditions visible in the footage are serious. Associating material of this nature with a particular municipality requires evidence capable of supporting the location and date. We therefore continued tracing it.

We have now identified its source context.

The footage can be traced to the documented Bozüyük municipal animal facility in Bilecik Province during the shelter incident that emerged at the end of March 2026.

Correcting the record is important for more than geographical accuracy. Once the footage is returned to its proper context, considerably more can be established about the dogs, the response to the incident, the municipality’s position, subsequent NGO involvement, improvements at the facility and the eventual administrative outcome.

This is the chronology we have been able to establish.

30 March 2026 Conditions at Bozüyük become public

On 30 March, footage from the Bozüyük Municipality Natural Living Area began circulating in Türkiye following a visit by Mert Tuncel of Cennet Bahçesi Yaşam Derneği.

Dogs were shown in extremely poor physical condition. Concerns were raised about feeding, water and conditions within the facility. One of the most disturbing recordings showed dogs consuming the body of another dog.

Reports at the time described the dead dog as having died from starvation. We have not identified evidence of a post mortem establishing starvation as the cause of that individual animal’s death. We therefore distinguish between what the footage establishes and what was alleged at the time.

The Bilecik authorities subsequently opened an investigation into the incident.

Night of 30–31 March The facility is entered

The footage generated an immediate response from animal welfare representatives and members of the public.

Following a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, an inspection involving the Gendarmerie and lawyer Zeynep Varlık of the Bilecik Bar Association took place at approximately 03:00.

During that intervention, six recently dead dogs and one recently dead cat were reportedly discovered in a closed area.

The discovery of the animals was documented in contemporary reporting. Their individual causes of death were not established by the material we have reviewed and should not be inferred from the wider allegations surrounding the facility.

31 March–3 April Bozüyük Municipality responds

Bozüyük District Governor's Office subsequently issued a written statement announcing that the animals' care and living conditions were being examined by the relevant authorities and that the matter would be investigated.

Mayor Mehmet Talat Bakkalcıoğlu described the incident as distressing but disputed the suggestion that the poor condition of the dogs shown in the footage had originated at the Bozüyük facility.

In his detailed statement on 3 April, he said some dogs had been brought to Bozüyük during the preceding Thursday, Friday and Saturday from the Provincial Special Administration and Pazaryeri district and had arrived in very poor health. He said one animal had died during fighting between dogs and that other severely ill animals had also died.

This was the municipality’s account. We have not independently established the previous location, condition or history of each dog shown in the footage, so it is important to record it as the municipality’s explanation rather than as an independent finding.

The mayor also confirmed that he had ordered an internal municipal investigation and that the Public Prosecutor’s Office was conducting its own investigation. He said action would be taken against anyone found to have been negligent.

1 April The immediate intervention is documented

An account subsequently published by PADER provided further detail about the intervention.

The organisation reported that a team had travelled from Ankara and reached the facility at approximately 03:00. Records were made by the Gendarmerie on the prosecutor’s instructions and the animals were fed the following morning.

Representatives met the mayor and two deputy mayors.

Water containers were cleaned. The cat area was cleaned. Gravel was placed over earth areas. Expired medicines were identified. Problems at the facility and proposed solutions were to be prepared and submitted.

The contemporaneous account also raised an important question about the administrative traceability of the dogs.

According to a published account Bilecik DKMP initially did not allow animals to leave. The advocates reported that the animals were not registered, microchipped or sterilised and that attempts to establish documentation so sick animals could be removed were initially unsuccessful.

They described the situation starkly: the dogs were physically present in the shelter but administratively they effectively did not exist.

For an animal requiring urgent veterinary treatment, that distinction is important. Registration and traceability can determine whether an animal can move through the system and whether its eventual outcome can subsequently be established.

2 April Outside veterinarians arrive and dogs leave for treatment

By 2 April, further intervention was underway.

KOHAYDER reported that Bozüyük Municipality had brought three veterinarians from outside the city to examine the animals.

According to the organisation’s contemporaneous account, animals whose treatment could not be provided at the facility were transferred to HEPAD under a protocol.

KOHAYDER also reported after visiting Bozüyük that the number of dogs at the facility was decreasing and that many of the dogs visible in Mert Tuncel’s original footage were no longer there.

That observation does not establish the individual outcome of those dogs. However, we now have further contemporary evidence concerning some of the animals that left.

HEPAD representatives attended Bozüyük, met officials and assessed conditions at the facility. Contemporary reporting records that ten microchipped and sterilised dogs were taken into HEPAD’s care and transported to an animal hospital for examination.

This gives us a documented treatment pathway for at least some of the dogs removed following the intervention.

10 April Treatment, improvements and continuing NGO involvement

By 10 April, PADER reported that work at the facility was continuing.

A protocol had been signed with an NGO on 3rd April, local animal welfare organisations and volunteers were involved, and many cats and dogs had left the facility for treatment.

This information is important because the record does not end with the distressing footage from the end of March. There was intervention, outside veterinary assistance and work to improve conditions. The available evidence does not establish the full extent or permanence of those improvements, but they form part of the documented history and should be recorded alongside the failures that preceded them.

31 July An official administrative finding

The case subsequently produced an official administrative outcome.

On 31 July, the Turkish Presidency’s CİMER outcomes service published the result of a complaint concerning the Bozüyük animal-care facility.

According to the published outcome, an official examination determined that those responsible at the facility had committed prohibited conduct under Article 14(a) of Animal Protection Law No. 5199, which includes leaving animals hungry or thirsty, neglecting their care and causing physical or psychological suffering.

The published outcome states that an administrative fine was imposed on Bozüyük Municipality for each dog.

This later finding does not erase the municipality’s explanation given in April. Both belong in the record: the municipality’s account and the subsequent official administrative finding.

The footage resurfaces in August

Almost five months later, a short extract from the Bozüyük footage began circulating internationally under a different description:

Boyabat Municipal Shelter, Sinop Summer 2026.

There was no original source attached to the short clip, no filming date and no explanation of how Boyabat had been established as the location. We searched for evidence supporting that attribution and found none. Instead, we traced the clip back to the longer Bozüyük material described above.

We cannot establish the precise moment at which those particular seconds were recorded because the original camera file and its metadata are not available. We can establish that the footage was circulating in connection with the documented Bozüyük shelter case at the end of March and beginning of April 2026.

On the evidence available to us, the subsequent attribution to Boyabat, Sinop, in summer 2026 is incorrect.

That does not mean there have been no animal welfare concerns in Boyabat or elsewhere in Sinop Province. There have been, and we will examine those separately using Sinop’s own evidence.

Why accuracy is important

A municipality should not be associated with serious animal welfare allegations on the basis of incorrectly attributed footage. Equally, the place where an incident actually occurred should not disappear from the record when footage becomes detached from its original context.

There is another consequence when that happens. The subsequent history of the dogs can disappear too.

In Bozüyük, the story continued after the original footage. Animals received treatment, outside veterinarians and animal welfare organisations became involved, work was undertaken at the facility and the case eventually resulted in an official administrative finding.

We still cannot complete one part of that history. We do not know what happened to the severely emaciated cream-coloured dog who appears prominently in the first half of the video .

So that remains an open question and we will keep looking.

We chase facts that can be proven, and we follow paths that help the dogs. Sometimes that means documenting improvements as carefully as failures. Sometimes it means correcting information that has already travelled widely. And sometimes it means being prepared to say that something remains unknown.

Accuracy is not an obstacle to animal advocacy. It is what allows us to move beyond awareness, follow what happened next and look for outcomes that actually matter to the dogs.

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