Animal groups win victory in pit bull ban row

Perhaps it was the threat of mafia bosses, thugs, dogfight fans and in general the kind of people you wouldn’t want to mess with letting their dogs loose on an entire society that helped reverse the ban, but animal rights groups trying to talk some sense into the authorities and hundreds of thousands of people backing animal rights’ groups petitions also seems to have played a role in the reversal. Minister of Environment and Forestry Veysel Eroğlu on Thursday said a circular sent to local authorities had been cancelled and that “we are not going to take anybody’s dog.”

Problems with breed-specific legislation

Experts have pointed out many problems with this kind of legislation, but the fact that it simply does not work is probably the greatest defect. In addition to this, such bans infringe on personal freedoms. According to Professor Tamer Dodurka, head of the İstanbul University veterinary faculty of internal medicine, breed-specific legislation is also a violation of human rights. “What you should do is not ban a particular breed. This is not scientific. The entire world rejects this,” he said. He also noted that past examples in other countries showed that wherever pit bulls were banned, the number of pit bulls in that country rose rapidly. “We always tell people, when you see a dog you think is dangerous, don’t look at the dog’s breed, look at what the owner looks like. If the owner is dangerous, run away,” he added.

Lawyer Ahmet Kemal Şenpolat, head of the Animal Rights Federation (HAYTAP), pointed out other shortcomings of the pit bull ban and problems with breed-specific legislation in general, saying: “The problem here is not the pit bull itself. The problem is that there is no obstacle in the way of uncontrolled breeding and the sale of this breed. The problem is that by banning these animals you are creating the perception in the eyes of society that they are a brand of ‘fighting dogs.’ We had a similar law come out in 2004, and the popularity of dogfights across the country grew following that.”

Like many other experts, Şenpolat also said that it is not the pit bull, but the owners who give them a bad name who are to blame for pit-bull-related attacks. “Dog fighting websites get 10 times more clicks than our website, HAYTAP. There is incredible demand for this online. We as an organization keep appealing to prosecutors to shut these sites down, but the telecommunications law does not allow closing websites with animal fights.”

What to do about dog attacks?

Şenpolat said based on these realities, it was pretty clear what needed to be done. “We would expect the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to make an effort to take the law on animal cruelty from under the misdemeanor code and put it within the scope of the criminal code,” he said.

HAYTAP and other organizations also indicated further shortcomings in the withdrawn regulation, such as the lack of infrastructure and personnel in Turkey to take care of the animals, even if the authorities did manage to collect them all. “We are against them [pit bulls] being raised in urban areas. But these animals will always be illegally bred and used in fights. You see it a lot, they poison stray animals and more strays come back after a while,” Şenpolat added.

The correct method is to keep track of every single animal, which was what the law said specifically of pit bulls and a few other “power breeds” in 2004, but it was not enforced. In fact, as Şenpolat notes, pit bull ownership became much more widespread in Turkey, and pit bulls much more readily available.

A celebrity victim of a pit bull attack, TV host Öykü Serter, whose attack made news headlines in 2007, also says she doesn’t have anything against the breed. “The real problem is with dog owners. They use these dogs for all the wrong purposes. They are messing with the psychology of those animals and torture them,” she said.

A comprehensive study by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) notes that many other factors besides breed, such as heredity, sex, early experience, reproductive status, socialization and training, might affect aggressive behavior in dogs. No similar study exists in Turkey, but according to CDC findings more than 70 percent of all dog bite cases involve unneutered male dogs. An unneutered male dog is 2.6 times more likely to bite than a neutered dog. A chained or tethered dog is 2.8 times more likely to bite than a dog that is not chained or tethered. Ninety-seven percent of dogs involved in fatal dog attacks in 2006 were not spayed/neutered. Seventy-eight percent were kept not as pets, but rather for guarding, image enhancement, fighting or breeding. Eighty-four percent were maintained by reckless owners -- these dogs were abused or neglected, not humanely treated and kept or allowed to interact with children unsupervised.