Feature: Turks help stray animals during COVID-19 outbreak

In Turkey, with so few people on the streets due to the tight anti-coronavirus restrictions, the authorities and individuals are trying to make sure stray cats and dogs can live through the difficult time.

Street dogs and cats are usually taken care of by Turks. However, with advice to stay at home, animal charities are stepping in and help them in these extraordinary times.

"Stray animals are our responsibility, we cannot leave them by themselves. We have a duty for them too. So we have been mobilized throughout the country to prevent them from starvation," Pelin Sayilgan, the representative in Ankara for the Animal Rights Federation (Haytap), told Xinhua.

During the pandemic, most of the street animals which have become a prominent symbol of metropolises such as Ankara, Istanbul or Izmir, are bitterly suffering from the consequences of the lockdown imposed by the government to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Hundreds of thousands of businesses, cafes, restaurants and bakeries which used to feed stray cats and dogs are unable to provide leftovers for them. Also the mandatory curfew for elderly people has prevented them from taking care of them.

"Many animals are hungry and they cannot express their needs, so our volunteers are constantly working with the government or local officials to leave food and water for them to survive in cities and in the woods, where they usually assemble," Sayilgan pointed out.

"We call on all citizens to leave food and water for our animals outside their houses or buildings in these difficult times, when they have been ordered to stay at home," she added.

Selma Gonen, a Turk who has adopted several stray cats during the years, is watching out for those in need in the Cankaya neighborhood in capital Ankara, trying to prevent them from starvation and dehydration.

"I used to leave food and water for cats and dogs before the outbreak. Now I have doubled the amount that I am leaving for them, because I know that otherwise some of them who roam this area daily and know me will starve to death," she said.

Most of the animals have ear tags, a sign that they have been recorded by the municipality and treated by their vets, she indicated.

"But municipalities have a lot of other things to do during this time, so we have to step in and care for them, because they are part of our daily life," she stressed, urging citizens to adopt or foster stray animals during quarantine days from animal shelters.

"They will see that the curfew time will pass much easier with a cat or dog you care for, they will reward your generosity," Sayilgan said.

Turkey is under lockdown for three weeks with unprecedented measures. The streets are silent as the government focuses on efforts to halt the spread of the virus which has caused 725 fatalities and 34,109 infections so far, according to official figures on Tuesday.

Some big retail shops have donated pet food to animal charities in the last week, and the volunteers have been distributing them on a daily basis in big cities and surroundings areas.

On Sunday, Turkey's Interior Ministry issued an official order for governors to provide food, water and disinfection for street animals, a decision hailed by animal protection associations.

"Food and water will be left at the living environment of street animals such as parks and gardens, particularly in animal shelters," the ministry said in a statement.

Even though health experts have given assurances that the coronavirus pandemic is spread from human to human, increasing number of pets have been reportedly abandoned.

"Scientists have repeated that there is no evidence that companion animals can spread the disease, but we are receiving growing number of reports of people abandoning their pets on the streets or at animal shelters," regretted Sayilgan.

She warned that these pets have no chances to survive in animal shelters as other dogs or cats will attack them and snatch their food.