Quotes:
“Until the early 19th century, street dogs were regarded as neighbours, but with the onset of the Reform Era, when daily life began to undergo a transformation in line with the process of Westernization, they were driven out of the cities. For Europeans, the street dog was part of the image of the East, representing squalor; it had no place in the modern street. The exhibition sheds light on the urban history of our “loyal friends” living not only in the streets but eventually in our homes as well. Through photographs, travelogues, postcards, magazines and engravings the exhibition outlines the history of these fellow Istanbulites playing an important role in the daily life of the city in the 19th- and 20th-centuries.” (p. 7)
“Although Muslims consider dogs to be impure and never allow them into their homes, they don’t attempt interfere with their reproduction. Another advantage of the dogs is their ability in cleaning the refuse, garbage and food thrown on the Street. Men carrying long poles with livers, hearts and other offal can be seen walking around on the streets. Hoping to please the dogs of their neighbourhoods, the wealthy buy these at a cheap price and feed them to the dogs.” – Olivier, 1793
“Laziness is the distinguishing quality of the Constantinople dogs. They lie down in the middle of the street, five or six or dozen of them in a row or group, curled up in such a manner as to look much more like heaps of refuse than living animals, and they will sleep away the entire day, undisturbed by the din and clamor going on about them. [. . .] The canine population of Constantinople is divided into settlements and quarters, just as the human population is. Every street and neighbourhood is inhabited, or rather held possession of, by a certain number of dogs, the relatives and friends of one family, who never leave it themselves or allow strangers to come in. They have a sort of police force, with outposts and sentries, who go the rounds and act as scouts.” – Edmondo De Amicis, 1874
“During the reign of Mahmud II (r. 1808-1839), the exile of dogs from the city begins. The formalist implementations of modernization bore consequences that deranged the public in unexpected ways. The extermination of dogs was the most striking one of these. The streets of the city had created the dogs of Istanbul; however, as of the Tanzimat era, these streets were regarded as a historic scene that displayed the poverty and squalor of the Orient. Dogs were made part of the project of ridding streets of unpleasant images. The decaninization of 1910 even shook public opinion across the rest of the world. The heartbreaking barks of the dogs exiled to the deserted islands or, in a sense, the “other neighbourhood” and the ways in which they ate each other out of starvation was nothing more than a tiny, visible part of the immense tragedy caused by the Ottoman modernization based solely on imitation.” (p. 193)
Source
Işın, Ekrem, Gülru Tanman, The Four-Legged Municipality: Street Dogs of Istanbul, (Istanbul: Istanbul Research Institute, 2016), 7, 193.
Links
Istanbul Research Institute
http://en.iae.org.tr/Content/About-the-Istanbul-Research-Institute/127
Street Dogs of Istanbul
http://en.iae.org.tr/Exhibition/The-Four-Legged-Municipality/196
Exhibition Catalogue
https://artshop.peramuzesi.org.tr/tanim.asp?sid=HDR673T2VA1AIFG83PBE