Dogs in the trash compactor: an analysis takes us far to the east of Türkiye

An article is currently being shared on Facebook describing how dogs in eastern Turkey are being crushed to death in garbage disposal presses.

Danger! This topic is very extensive and therefore the article is long. We are referring here to the article entitled “ IMAGES THAT HURT: DOGS ARE PRESSED TO DEATH ALIVE ” from the site “ Issnruede.de “. This has a meaningful image showing a dog that is in a garbage truck press.

(Screenshot: Facebook, public status)

The article itself is on the site “ Issnruede.de ” and contains several pictures of the dog trapped in this situation. A garbage disposal vehicle is also pictured, in which the dog is supposedly stuck. According to contentious statements, these are images from Tunceli Pülümür (in the east of Turkey), but also, in the same breath, from Izmir (west of Turkey).

The article also contains a copy of a letter addressed to the mayor of the city of Bremen. In this case, what is meant is Ms. Linnert from Alliance 90/The Greens, who has been the mayor and senator for finance as Carsten Sieling's deputy in Bremen since 2007.

Since Bremen and Izmir a twin town relationship , the petitioner is trying to end the torturous circumstances for the animals in this way. You now ask the mayor:

As the mayor of Bremen, it is up to you to hold the responsible authorities in Izmir accountable and to terminate the city partnership if these cruel murders of innocent animals are not stopped IMMEDIATELY.

(Quote: Issnruede.de )

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Briefly, the chronological order: even if the majority of the comments and the distribution point to November 2015, this article is already a year old and dates from November 24, 2014 . It is not clear from the content whether and to what extent the situation in Turkey has changed during this time.

An excerpt from the comment history under the article shows: there is an entry from November 25, 2014, an entry from March 2015 and 94(!) comments from November 2015 (as of November 10, 2015)

(Screenshot: Issnruede.de )

However, this letter to Ms. Linnert in Bremen will hardly bear any fruit. We will explain the reason for this below.

Geographical problem

The letter is now written to the mayor of Bremen because it is supposed to be a problem in Izmir, because the article also shows a picture of a garbage truck from Izmir. However, the introductory part of the article appears to have been edited, as there is a different location information there:

We received an appeal to the mayor of Bremen, which revealed something shocking. Dogs in Tunceli Pülümür (eastern Turkey) are taken from the streets and pressed to death in garbage trucks.

(Quote: Issnruede.de )

The problem now becomes when you look at where the cities mentioned are located! Izmir is a large city located on the west coast of Turkey, but the city of Tunceli Pülümür is about 1340km away in the east of the country . It should now be very difficult for a mayor of Bremen to denounce grievances in Izmir, which are said to have taken place 1,340km further east. So let's now look at where this discrepancy comes from.

In this context, another source answers this question. The content of “ Issnruede.de to have been taken from the site “ houndsandpeople It now becomes clear how the geographical error arose. This article on “ houndsandpeople ” in its first version dated November 19th, 9:57 a.m. speaks exclusively of Izmir in the letter, but the following correction was added November 19th, 4:22 p.m

CORRECTION:

Dear animal lovers,

As I have only now found out from Jutta Turan, Tierhilfe Izmir ( [email protected] ), it does not affect Izmir but Tunceli Pülümür in the very east of Turkey, where this happened, there are no animal protection organizations or animal shelters / rescue centers there. The license plate number starts with 35 but it doesn't belong to Izmir. I read the original post.

However, the article still has the headline “IZMIR / TURKEY – DOGS ARE PRESSED TO DEATH ALIVE” and the request in the article is also still to ask the mayor of Bremen for help.

Origin of the images

Now it gets even more interesting: what you can say with a lot of certainty: the pictures come from Turkey. On November 13, 2014 , a whole series of pictures showed this dog and a garbage truck on a Twitter account Since these pictures are 6 days older than the article on “ houndsandpeople ” and also come from a Turkish account, they appear to be the original ones.

And here is a slightly different story about these images. First of all: yes, the animals ended up in the garbage truck. But here the Turkish content tells a completely different story !

The Turkish Twitter account does not speak of the animals being killed, but rather of the animals being transported from one city to another city inappropriate way In addition to the pictures known so far, there are a few more pictures from this situation that underline the originality of the information. There is even a kind of handwritten “delivery note” confirming the transport of 36 dogs.

(Screenshot: Twitter )

This says:

protocol

The 36 strays [?kaper] found in [the municipality] of Pülümür-Tunceli were handed over to the animal shelter in [the municipality of] Erzincan by the municipality of Pülümür on November 13, 2014.

Handover by employee of the city of Pülümür: Düzgün IBIN

Takeover: Murat Susmus

What is now happening here: the fact that animals are not being transported in a species-appropriate manner is being denounced. The dogs are not transported in an appropriate vehicle, but in a garbage truck. And this is where the picture from Izmir comes into play: the owner of the Twitter account uses the picture of the garbage truck from Izmir to show the poor conditions under which the animals are being transported. He captions this picture with accusation: “What if you were in there?”

In this respect, this image should be understood more as a symbol and does not show real animal transport. The idea here is to show how you would feel if you were locked in a garbage truck.

But the transport that happened and the car can also be seen on this Twitter account. The following picture shows the situation of animal transport.

In this picture you can now see the garbage truck and the dog gate. Just as clearly, the account owner posts a picture on Twitter of what he thinks a dog transport should look like ( see here ). So his intention, as well as the entire description that can be read on his Twitter account on November 13, 2014, is quite coherent.

Apart from the fact that the dogs were actually not transported in a species-appropriate manner, there is also a picture that shows the animals after their arrival in Erzincan .

This story can now be read from the Twitter account and was uploaded to the internet from there. There are no parallel sites, but also no older sites. There are also no more detailed sources anywhere, so we assume that this Twitter account is the author of the pictures and was also present during the transport. However, this transport seems to have been very disgraceful , so he felt it was important to wake people up with these images of the torturous transport.

The images can be found publicly on this account: https://twitter.com/aaskim71 , please scroll until November 13, 2014. If you want to read the content yourself, it is best to have a Turkish-speaking person with you, as the online translators sometimes translate very strangely.

In conclusion

In the course of researching these images, we have now read from various sources that the situation for dogs in Turkey, especially strays, is truly problematic. At this point we in no way doubt any kind of animal protection efforts! We'll leave it at this point and not delve into it any further. Our focus in this article is on the images shown, their origin and why a letter to the mayor of Bremen has little success.

At this point I would like to thank my colleague Özlem, who provided translation support throughout.