The Mental Health Toll on Turkey’s Animal Carers
The truth is, community carers in Turkey are breaking
Across Turkey right now, the people who quietly feed, treat and protect street animals are carrying a weight that is becoming impossible to bear. These community carers,mostly unpaid, mostly women, often working alone, are trying to hold back a tidal wave with their bare hands.
In the last year, that wave has become a tsunami.
With the passing and enforcement of the so-called massacre law on stray dogs, municipalities are now required to round up street dogs and place them in shelters, with the power to euthanise those deemed dangerous or sick. Animal welfare groups, lawyers and activists across Turkey and Europe have warned that this law is already leading to mass killing, horrific shelter conditions and widespread abuse.
At the same time, reports from the ground describe a radical crackdown on animal lovers and activists: dogs brutally captured, bodies dumped in pits, carers harassed, threatened and, in some cases, detained or investigated simply for caring.
This is the reality community carers in Turkey are waking up to every single day.
Who are community carers?
Community carers are the people who:
Take food and water to street dogs and cats before work and again late at night
Pay for vet treatment from their own pockets
Build makeshift shelters from scrap wood and old pallets
Try to mediate with angry neighbours and hostile municipalities
Stand between animals and those who want them gone
Many have been doing this quietly for years. They are the reason so many dogs and cats have survived on the streets for as long as they have. They have always been the safety net.
Now, that safety net is being cut.
A new, hostile climate
It’s important to understand just how much the landscape has changed for them.
License to kill atmosphere: The new law has emboldened people who hate animals. Activists report increases in poisoning, shootings and brutal captures, with the law seen by some as a green light for cruelty.
Crackdown on activists: International organisations and media have documented a radical crackdown on animal rights activists in Turkey, with campaigns, protests and social media posts attracting threats, investigations and intimidation.
Community carers are now working in an environment where doing the right thing can make you a target. That changes everything.
The mental health toll: compassion fatigue, trauma and moral injury
International research on animal welfare workers is very clear: constant exposure to suffering, cruelty and death is psychologically damaging. It is strongly linked to compassion fatigue, burnout and secondary traumatic stress, conditions similar in some ways to PTSD.
For community carers in Turkey, these risks are now amplified:
Endless trauma: They are not just feeding hungry animals; they are witnessing mass round-ups, injured dogs left untreated in municipal shelters, poisoned bodies, and animals they love disappearing without explanation.
Helplessness and moral injury: Carers are being forced to watch animals dragged away, knowing what will happen to them, and being unable to stop it. That sense of helplessness, of being prevented from doing what you know is right, is deeply damaging and is known to contribute to moral injury and severe distress.
Isolation and vilification: Many are isolated in their own communities, treated as troublemakers or fanatics for loving animals. Online, they can be targeted by coordinated hate campaigns and accused of valuing dogs more than human life.
Guilt and self-blame: They feel responsible for every animal they cannot save, every dog they didn’t reach in time, every cat they had to leave behind because there was no space, no money, no way.
The symptoms we are seeing and hearing about are those described in the literature on compassion fatigue: emotional numbness, chronic anxiety, intrusive images, insomnia, hopelessness, depression, and thoughts that the world is simply too cruel to keep living in.
“We are terrified we will lose them”
At Dog Desk Animal Action, we are deeply, genuinely afraid.
We are afraid for the animals, of course but we are also afraid for the people who care for them.
We see carers:
Saying they can’t stop seeing the dogs that were taken in front of them.
Saying they don’t recognise themselves anymore, they feel empty, angry, detached, or constantly on the verge of tears.
Talking openly about feeling broken, finished, done with this world.
Using words that scare us because they echo exactly what mental health professionals describe as warning signs for suicide.
We are profoundly worried that, in this current climate in Turkey, some community carers will break and be lost forever to suicide.
When you mix:
Long-term trauma and grief
Constant exposure to violence and death
Isolation, vilification and fear
Financial ruin and physical exhaustion
An environment that tells you over and over that your work is meaningless or criminal
…you create the perfect storm for extreme despair.
We cannot pretend this isn’t happening. We cannot talk about rescue work as if it is just heart-warming adoption stories and cute photos. There is a mental health emergency among Turkey’s community carers, and it is unfolding quietly, in private messages, in sleepless nights, in people slowly slipping away inside themselves.
What needs to change
There is no single solution, but there are steps we must push for, together.
1. Recognition of carers as at-risk frontline workers
Animal carers and activists are frontline in this crisis. Governments, NGOs and international bodies need to recognise the mental and physical health risks they face in the same way we acknowledge risks for medics, humanitarian workers and human rights defenders.
Research already shows that animal welfare workers are at high risk of trauma and burnout. That evidence must be applied to Turkey’s context, where state policy and social hostility are magnifying the harm.
2. Accessible mental health support
Carers in Turkey urgently need:
Anonymous, affordable mental health support (online and in person)
Peer-support spaces where they can talk honestly without being judged as weak or overreacting
Resources on compassion fatigue and trauma in Turkish, tailored specifically for animal workers
International organisations can help fund therapy, helplines and support programmes designed for rescuers and carers.
3. Practical relief: food, vet bills, safe spaces
Mental health cannot be separated from practical reality.
When carers know their feeding points are covered, they can rest.
When vet bills are shared, they can breathe again.
When there are safe foster or sanctuary spaces, they do not have to watch animals be taken to certain death.
Every bag of food sponsored, every vet bill paid, every dog moved to a safer environment is not just saving animals it is protecting the mental health of the person who cares for them.
4. Legal and advocacy work to reduce the pressure
We need sustained advocacy to:
Challenge the worst abuses under the new law
Push for humane alternatives such as large-scale sterilisation and vaccination programmes
Defend carers’ right to feed and care for street animals without harassment or criminalisation
Reducing the hostility and risk they face on the streets is an essential part of safeguarding their mental health.
If you are a community carer in Turkey and this feels close to home
If you are reading this from Turkey, and you recognise yourself in these words:
You are not weak.
You are not alone.
You are not crazy for feeling like this.
What you are feeling is a human response to inhuman circumstances.
If you are having thoughts about ending your life, or feel you can’t keep going:
Please, speak to someone you trust – a friend, a family member, another carer who understands.
Reach out to a local mental health professional or crisis service in your area.
If you are outside Turkey, contact your local crisis line or emergency services.
Your life matters as much as the lives of the animals you fight for. The movement cannot afford to lose you.
How we move forward – together
Our work at Dog Desk Animal Action is not only about saving animals; it is about standing with the people who refuse to abandon them.
Moving forward, we are committed to:
Putting the mental health of community carers at the centre of our campaigning on Turkey
Speaking honestly about the risk of burnout, breakdown and suicide, not to sensationalise, but to protect
Working with partners to develop more structured support for carers on the ground
Continuing to expose the reality of the massacre law and the human cost of this policy
The situation for community carers in Turkey right now is desperate. But they are still out there, every day, in back streets, forests, industrial estates and villages, feeding, comforting and trying to protect the animals everyone else has abandoned.
They should not have to choose between saving lives and losing themselves.
We owe it to them and to the animals they love, to fight for a future where caring does not cost them everything.