Manisa has published a substantial update on its stray-dog programme. We are told how much accommodation has been created, how many dogs have been sterilised, how many animals have been adopted and that most of the province’s stray animals have now been removed from the streets and incorporated into its care and rehabilitation system. The province even has its own digital information system designed to make this work regularly measurable.
But one important figure is missing. How many dogs have died?
At the latest Provincial Animal Protection Board meeting, officials reported 15 animal shelters with combined capacity for 3,195 animals, together with natural-living areas across all 17 districts with stated capacity for another 24,247 animals. Since 2024, 15,625 dogs have been sterilised and 2,459 stray animals have been adopted. Officials say the majority of stray animals have been taken from the streets and brought into the care and rehabilitation system.
Those figures tell us a great deal about what Manisa has built and what its municipalities are doing. What the published account does not tell us is how many dogs have died after entering municipal care or why they died.
That omission becomes particularly important because Manisa has created the Manisa Animal Information System, ManisaHBS. The system was established by the Governor’s Office following the introduction of the provincial action plan in April 2025. Officials say collection, sterilisation, rehabilitation and adoption are regularly tracked through it.
If dogs can be tracked when they are collected, sterilised, rehabilitated and adopted, their deaths should not disappear from the story.
We are not starting from an assumption that unusually large numbers of dogs have died in Manisa. We don’t know how many have died. That is the whole point. It’s very encouraging whenever any municipal shelter anywhere in the world publishes data. But mortality rates are vital numbers that should be included when measuring success.
And knowing the number alone would only be the beginning.
How many dogs died from infectious disease? How many arrived seriously ill or injured and subsequently died? How many died from conditions which developed while they were in municipal care? How many died following treatment or surgery? How many deaths were attributed to age or chronic disease? How many dogs were euthanised, and what reasons were recorded?
There is a bigger question behind all of this, because Manisa is described as a province which reached its target early. Officials say most of its stray dogs had been collected and the rehabilitation process started, although field searches, public reports and the collection of subsequently identified animals continue.
But what should a municipal target actually measure? A municipal target should be how many dogs it keeps alive. Because that is the whole point surely? Shelters are places where dogs receive care & get a chance at a happy life. They aren’t warehouses.
Removing a dog from a street is an administrative action. It tells us where the dog stopped being visible to the public. It does not tell us whether that dog was still alive a week, a month or six months later.
If a municipality collects 10,000 dogs, success should not end with recording 10,000 collections. We should know how many of those dogs are still alive, how many have been adopted, how many remain in municipal care and, where dogs have died, how many died and why.
That changes the question completely. Instead of asking “Did you reach your collection target?”, we should be asking: “Of the dogs you collected, how many did you keep alive?”
That is why the missing mortality information matters so much. Without knowing how many dogs died, we cannot calculate survival. Without knowing why they died, we cannot understand what those deaths represent.
A dog may arrive at a shelter with catastrophic injuries. Another may have an advanced infectious disease. An elderly dog may die despite appropriate veterinary treatment. These are sadly expected outcomes when helping dogs who have lived & suffered on the streets. There is no shame in expressing those figures. Other deaths may raise questions about disease control, treatment, accommodation or conditions inside a facility. Euthanasia is another category again and should be reported separately. And that is the most important figure of all. Healthy dogs should never be included in that number.
Putting all of those animals into one unexplained death total would tell us very little. Publishing deaths together with recorded causes would tell us considerably more.
The enormous capacity figures make that information even more important. Manisa reports 27,442 places across its shelters and natural-living areas. Knowing how many dogs could be accommodated does not tell us how many dogs are actually living there today.
If most of Manisa’s stray dogs have now entered the system, there should be a population which can be accounted for. We should be able to establish how many dogs entered municipal care, how many remain alive, how many were adopted, how many were transferred elsewhere and how many died.
Those numbers should reconcile.
This is not simply our interpretation of what monitoring should look like. Manisa Governor Vahdettin Özkan said at the meeting that the work should not be regarded only as collection. He described a wider system incorporating planning, institutional coordination, technological monitoring, sterilisation, rehabilitation, natural-living areas, adoption and continuing inspection. He also said public safety and animal welfare should be considered together.
If animal welfare is one of the objectives, then survival has to be one of the things we measure.
The meeting itself was attended by Interior Ministry chief inspector Ahmet Altunbaş and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry chief inspector İbrahim Karadurak, alongside Governor Özkan and other provincial officials. Shelter and natural-living-area capacity, collection, sterilisation, rehabilitation, care and adoption were among the subjects considered.
That makes the absence of mortality information even more relevant as Türkiye moves towards declaring its national collection programme complete.
We are hearing increasingly precise figures about how successfully dogs are being removed from streets. Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi is now reporting national collection above 99%, while Manisa says it reached its own target early.
But there is a fundamental difference between measuring collection and measuring animal welfare. A collection percentage tells us how effectively dogs have disappeared from public spaces. A survival figure tells us what happened to the dogs.
Manisa has already demonstrated that it can count shelter capacity, sterilisation, adoption and collection activity. It has created a dedicated digital system specifically to monitor its programme. There is therefore every reason to ask for the information that would allow the public to look beyond the collection target and understand what has happened to the animals themselves.
Tell us how many dogs entered municipal care. Tell us how many are still alive. Tell us how many were adopted. Tell us how many died, and tell us why they died.
Because the measure of success should never simply be how many dogs a municipality managed to remove from its streets.
Of the dogs you collected, how many did you keep alive?