New animal rights laws in Turkey

[dinosaw]

I came across this story in the Hurriyet daily about changes to the animal welfare laws in Turkey and thought it was quite interesting, any prospective pet owner in Turkey will need to complete an animal care training course and obtain a certificate before being allowed to own an animal, anyone selling a pet to someone without a certificate will be fined. It seems a good idea to me as it would weed out a good proportion of idiots but imagine the stink it would cause if the UK government tried to introduce anything similar despite us being a self proclaimed nation of animal lovers.

The ownerless animals clause is interesting as there appear to be a good number of unowned dogs here who spend their days lying around on street corners, they are all obese as I presume they get food from many different people, it is interesting to watch them cross the road, they have certainly learned their green cross code. As for cats, I have never seen so many cats anywhere, the place is full of them. You see little piles of cat biscuits left here and there on the streets by people to feed them, I will try and get some photos as time goes on.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/pet-ownership-will-require-a-certificate-in-turkey.aspx?PageID=238&NID=65628&NewsCatID=341

 

[Marigold]

I wonder how on earth they police this? What is to stop anybody just getting a dog or a cat, when there seem to be so many going spare? Does it rely on people reporting their neighbours if they turn up with a new puppy? Curious that there are so many living 'free' when the government is so concerned about pets in private hands.
I wonder if here is any legislation covering farm animals, eg chickens?

 

[dinosaw]

I've done a bit of reading around the subject since posting Marigold and I think I can see where they are coming from with this. Currently there are huge numbers of street dogs in Turkey, people seem to like them, or at least are tolerant of them and don't wish to see them euthanised so the government has come up with a scheme whereby they trap them, neuter them, vaccinate them and treat any illness and then release them, it is then hoped that the numbers will decrease as they stop breeding with each other. However this doesn't address the problem of people dumping animals they had bought when they found they couldn't handle them so I think this law is meant to at least make people think before buying and will make it harder for people to just impulse buy from pet shops. I agree with you about the practicalities and have no idea how you would go about enforcement, I suppose you could make it compulsory to show your certificate on visits to the vet or issue a scannable microchip which matches the certificate number. Apparently rabies is endemic in dogs here and we both had the three rabies shots each necessary before coming out at the whopping cost of £45 per shot.

 

[chrismahon]

Reminds me of the story of my father getting bitten by a dog in India when he lived there as a child. He had to have a series of injections into his stomach I think. I remember him telling me how big the needle was!

It seems to be a good idea this law in principle Dinosaw. But as with any new law only time will tell if it causes so many complications it has to be repealed or heavily amended.

As far as I know nothing like that is planned here. But I need to get a paper called 'The Connexion' which comes out monthly at a whopping €3.50 a month, which is a translated summary of events in France over the last month. They have just scrapped their new 'self employment' laws, after only two years, because I think there was a huge amount of fraud. I've been told the system gave National Insurance credits for two years, even if you made no profits and that then got you a fifth of a State Pension here starting at 60 years old.

 

[dinosaw]

Wow, thats a lot of pension for only 2 years contributions but then you are living in a country that will effectively give you 2 months worth of pay in unemployment benefit for every 4 months you work for up to a 2 year limit. Obviously a very badly drafted law not requiring taxable profits though the idea of being able to set up your own non profit making business to get a pension has tickled me Chris. Imagine the amount of useless occupations it could spawn. You could set up a window dirtying business or maybe sub-contract as a self employed hod dropper, perhaps you could be the first person to manufacture pencil blunters, of course there would always be people out there who would spoil it, take it too far and make up imaginary jobs like human resources consultant 07

 

[chrismahon]

The favourite registered option in the Limosin amongst the Brits is 'picture framer' Dinosaw. I was told, if I remember correctly, there were 600! No surprise they have canned the scheme then. That means an extra 120 full pensions worth of payouts for nothing and if I was French I'd be pretty unhappy about it. We face enough 'racism' here as it is, without Brit scroungers making it worse. Pretty embarrassing for us actually. Thing is these will be the same Brits that complain about immigrants to the UK getting benefits.

 

[dinosaw]

Yes Chris it's a shame that the British expat community worldwide seems to count a large number of idiots among it's number. I remember the large number of gleeful comments on online news from expats in Spain whenever anything went wrong in Britain, oh what mugs we were, it was cheaper in Spain, they had better weather, better healthcare and of course they didn't have the same number of dreadful immigrants, the irony of their own comments being lost on them it seemed, any counter argument was of course put down to jealousy. Now we have a number of stories about the exodus from Spain, British residency dropped by 90000 or 23 per cent last year, people often losing large sums of money on their property, returning for numerous reasons beyond the obvious financial ones. Most of them are probably decent people but you can imagine the sympathy level for them given the way a number of them lauded it before. Interestingly studies found that British migrants to the med are less happy than those who stayed at home and the main reason for this is social isolation, in other words not learning the language, which can hardly have helped them.

 

[chrismahon]

I know of two couples who have been here over 20 years and don't speak French Dinosaw. We are learning slowly. It is difficult, but not helped by the North and South France accents. We learned very basic North before we arrived and are now in the South and are often corrected. We have just met another couple who moved from York a year ago and find it too much work to keep pace with their lovely garden, because stuff grows twice as fast here. They don't like the isolation, even though it is lovely and quiet and they have a fantastic view of the Pyrenees. They miss shops and restaurants just round the corner. They are moving back and will take a big hit with moving costs and have lost 15% of their money on estate agent and lawyer fees. They have a small house in Spain but don't want to live there and can't sell it. Healthcare is better here because you are paying more for it -just the same as if you had a Bupa policy in the UK. Stuff happens same day with no waiting at all. Doctor, hospital, X-rays, specialist, appointment for operation happens on the same day usually.

Easy to forget why you moved in the first place and it can be incredibly boring if you have no interests and friends. The French are, on the whole, approachable. Far more tolerant of foreigners than the English are I think. We are just immigrants to them and right at the bottom of the social order. I just love waking up knowing that no-one has stolen the chickens, or anything else for that matter! I used to get up in the middle of the nights and go out to check ours, regardless of the weather. And the weather here isn't that great either. Half the Brits move back after their first Winter. A lot are leaving here and house prices are falling as a result.

 

[dinosaw]

Yes I think you need to move for the right reasons and remember that wherever you go you can't outrun yourself. We are lucky in that we are very self sufficient, have very few friends and don't need much contact with other people, so beyond being able to function in a place we don't need much else. We were considering moving to rural Portugal right up to last year for entirely the wrong reasons, namely that we could bring forward our 'escape' by a few years as property and living costs were cheaper there than in Scotland, we did quite a few fact-finding trips and to be fair it's a very nice country with people who actually seem to like the english, good infrastructure, decent health care for a flat fee of £30 per event, cheap and good food and wine and quiet roads it was a bit like turning the clock back 30-40 years, however the scorching summers and bleached landscape didn't appeal and when you scratched the surface energy costs were high as were motoring costs and in terms of property and land you weren't comparing like with like. I would imagine for anyone thinking of moving abroad renting for a year before deciding would seem a sensible option. Seems like you are enjoying France by and large.

 

[chrismahon]

We hadn't planned on renting for a year and now we are at 20 months I think Dinosaw. Not selling our house was a blessing in disguise as we would have done the same as other Foreigners, bought totally the wrong thing in the wrong place and then had to sell and move. By and large France is great. Food and clothes are very expensive. But if you store enough water for Summer you can grow your own veg and clothes can be bought second hand. Other stuff is about the same price except alcohol, which is very cheap. Isolation isn't a problem to us, that's what we need. But we really must get back to learning the language as that is a massive barrier to full enjoyment.

Just to add. We passed the Co-op wine factory today on the way back from the tip. It had new signs out front advertising a retail outlet so we went in. Red, white or rose sold by the litre with a pump, like a petrol station, for each. €1.40 per litre, which I actually thought a bit expensive!