When Türkiye amended its Animal Protection Law in 2024, much of the international debate focused on what the changes would mean for free roaming dogs. The headlines centred on collection, shelters and euthanasia, while campaigners argued over the likely consequences for animal welfare. Less attention was paid to another question that may prove just as significant. The law did not simply change how street dogs would be managed. It fundamentally changed who could be held responsible for them.
That question has become impossible to ignore following the Interior Ministry’s decision to authorise investigations into the mayors of Köyceğiz and Narman and to launch a preliminary investigation into the mayor of Hilvan. In two of the cases, the investigations follow attacks on children. In the third, the allegation concerns a municipality’s failure to establish the shelter required under the amended law.
For decades, free roaming dogs occupied a unique place within Turkish society. They were not treated as wildlife, but neither were they regarded as owned animals for which an individual person could be held responsible. They lived alongside communities, were fed by residents, sterilised by municipalities under the previous legal framework and, after treatment, were returned to the streets. Whether people agreed with that system or not, it accepted one fundamental principle. Street dogs would continue to exist in public spaces.
That legal principle has now changed.
Under the amended law, municipalities are responsible for collecting free roaming dogs and placing them in shelters rather than returning them to the streets. That much is clear. What is less widely understood is that the law also recognises that municipalities require time to build the infrastructure needed to achieve that objective. The legislation provides a transitional period, giving municipalities until the end of 2028 to establish or improve shelters and allocate the necessary resources.
This is where the legal position becomes particularly interesting.
Although the law creates the new duties, it does not state that every dog in Türkiye must be collected immediately. The instruction that municipalities could not wait until 2028 before beginning collection came later through ministerial implementation directives. Those directives made it clear that local authorities were expected to begin collecting dogs without delay and should not rely on the transitional period as a reason for postponing action.
That distinction may appear technical, but it is important because legislation and ministerial directives are not the same thing. Parliament established the legal framework and the transitional arrangements. The executive then set out how it expected that framework to be implemented in practice.
The recent investigations suggest that the government now considers municipalities to be directly accountable for the consequences of failing to fulfil those duties. In Narman, the Interior Ministry alleges that the municipality failed to collect free roaming dogs within its area of responsibility before a ten year old boy suffered life changing injuries. In Köyceğiz, investigators cited not only the serious attack on an eleven year old child but also wider concerns relating to shelter capacity, veterinary services and repeated dog attacks over a two year period. In Hilvan, the issue is different again, focusing on the alleged failure to establish the shelter required under the legislation.
Taken together, these cases raise a much broader question than whether three individual mayors complied with the law. They suggest that Türkiye has redefined the relationship between municipalities and free roaming dogs. Animals that for decades existed as part of the urban landscape have become the direct legal responsibility of local government, with mayors now facing personal investigation where the state believes those responsibilities have not been met.
Whether that represents good public policy is a matter on which opinions will differ. What cannot be disputed is that it marks a profound change in legal responsibility. If municipalities are now expected to prevent the presence of free roaming dogs on the streets, then responsibility for incidents involving those dogs has shifted in a way that would have been difficult to imagine under the previous legal framework.
These investigations may therefore come to be remembered not because three mayors found themselves under scrutiny, but because they demonstrate how the amended law is now being enforced. The legislation has moved beyond theory and into practice, and with that shift comes a new legal reality in which the actions, or inaction, of municipal authorities may carry personal consequences.
As Türkiye continues to implement one of the most significant changes to its animal protection legislation in decades, understanding that shift in responsibility may prove just as important as understanding the law itself. The fate of the country’s free roaming dogs will not be determined by legislation alone. It will also be shaped by how that legislation is interpreted, enforced and applied in municipalities across the country.