Didim Turkiye - Dog Screams As It Is Dragged By Its Leg, Man Who Tried To Help Is Detained

The footage coming out of Didim is deeply distressing and, having watched it, it is difficult to understand how anyone could consider what happened to this dog an acceptable way to collect a frightened animal from the street. The dog had taken refuge beneath a car and was clearly terrified, yet during the attempt to remove it the animal can be seen being dragged out by one leg while screaming before being thrown upside down into a net. The sound of the dog screaming is particularly difficult to hear because there can be absolutely no doubt about the level of distress it was experiencing.

This is exactly why we have continued to argue that Türkiye’s removal of dogs from its streets cannot simply be discussed through government announcements, collection figures and shelter numbers. Behind every statistic is an individual animal experiencing the reality of this policy, and this footage gives us an uncomfortable glimpse of what that reality can look like when a frightened dog does not willingly surrender itself to the people who have come to take it away.

Street dogs do not understand legislation or government collection targets. Many have spent their entire lives living freely within their communities, sleeping in familiar places, being fed by familiar people and moving away whenever something frightens them. When that escape is suddenly taken away, fear is entirely predictable. A dog crawling beneath a vehicle in an attempt to avoid capture is not behaving unusually, and anybody tasked with collecting frightened animals should be trained and equipped to deal with precisely that situation without causing unnecessary suffering.

Capturing a terrified dog can undoubtedly be difficult, but difficulty cannot become an excuse for poor handling. Humane capture requires patience, appropriate equipment, knowledge of animal behaviour and people capable of recognising when their actions are escalating an animal’s fear. Watching a dog screaming while being dragged from beneath a car by a leg raises serious questions about whether those standards were being met in Didim and whether the people carrying out these collections have been given the training necessary to do so safely and humanely.

It was during this incident that Ali Asker Sarıaydın became involved. Sarıaydın had been alerted to the collection and went to the scene, where a confrontation subsequently developed between him and municipal personnel. He was later detained and questioned as a suspect over allegations including resisting, threatening and insulting officials, allegations which he denies. Sarıaydın has made allegations of his own, maintaining that he was threatened and insulted and asking for recordings of what happened to be examined as evidence.

Those competing allegations will need to be considered properly and we will not attempt to decide through an article what happened during every moment of that confrontation. What we can examine, however, is the footage of the dog, because that footage provides important context for understanding why somebody witnessing this collection might have felt compelled to intervene.

This was a visibly terrified animal. It had hidden beneath a car and was trying to escape capture. Its screams can be heard as it is pulled out by a leg and its body ends up upside down as it is put into the net. Whatever happened between the people present afterwards does not erase what happened to the dog immediately beforehand, and the existence of a dispute should not be allowed to shift attention away from the animal whose treatment started it.

Didim Municipality should now be explaining what happened. We need to know who was responsible for carrying out this collection, what training those involved had received in humane capture and restraint, what protocols were being followed and whether dragging a frightened dog by a limb is considered compatible with those protocols. We also need to know whether the dog was examined afterwards for injuries, where it was taken and, importantly, where that dog is now.

These questions carry additional weight because Dog Desk Animal Action is already monitoring Didim amid wider concerns surrounding the collection and fate of free roaming dogs in the district. We have previously reported allegations emerging from the area and have repeatedly called for transparency over what happens to dogs once they are removed from the communities where they have lived. Every new piece of footage therefore has to be considered within a much bigger picture in which trust between animal carers and the authorities responsible for collecting dogs has become dangerously fragile.

That relationship matters because community carers are often the people who know these animals better than anybody else. They know where individual dogs sleep, what they eat, which animals are elderly or frightened, which are receiving treatment and which have effectively been part of a neighbourhood for years. When those people see an animal they know being taken away, particularly when the collection itself appears distressing, it should hardly be surprising that emotions run high.

This is also why authorities need to recognise that humane handling and transparency are not obstacles to implementing policy. They are fundamental safeguards within it. If Türkiye intends to continue removing huge numbers of dogs from its streets, the responsibility to ensure that those animals are handled competently becomes greater, not smaller. The fact that a dog is destined for a shelter does not mean its welfare suddenly becomes irrelevant during capture.

There also needs to be space for members of the public to question what they witness without every disagreement becoming an escalating confrontation. Municipal workers are entitled to carry out their lawful duties without threats or abuse, just as animal carers and members of the public are entitled to raise legitimate welfare concerns. Where allegations are made on either side, evidence should determine what happened, and in this case the existence of recordings makes their proper examination particularly important.

What should not become lost in the legal arguments surrounding Sarıaydın is the animal at the centre of them. A dog was frightened enough to crawl beneath a car to escape the people attempting to collect it and then screamed as it was dragged out by a leg before being thrown upside down into a net. That is not an abstract debate about Türkiye’s street dog legislation. It is what implementation of that legislation looked and sounded like for one dog in Didim and if footage such as this does not cause authorities to examine how these collections are being carried out, it is difficult to imagine what will.