Yeah, urban social liberals of this sub not withstanding, dogs do get a different treatment than cats.

People don't like dogs in this country. They abuse them in the streets, throw rocks at them, kick them while they lay on the ground, literally swerve their car towards them.

Dogs are considered dirty and impure in Islam. I've been told so many times I shouldn't keep my dogs in the home "because in Islam they are dirty".

People don't educate their kids about dogs. Every single day when we walk down the street I see some idiotic young mother drag her kid across the street when they see us and scare her kid by telling the kid that if they get close to us the dog would bite them (this is a small dog). This is how future generations of Turkish people are taught to treat and be scared of dogs in this country.

Literally the other day while I was walking my dog a group of 12 year olds came up to us and started barking at my dog to get a reaction out of her.

There is also a general lack of care for dogs. People treat them as toys. I know first hand how people get a puppy when they move to a new city for university, then after 4 years and graduation, they abandon the dog in the street when they go back to their home town.

I know first hand how people get a puppy for their kid, and abandon it in the street once they realize the kid isn't taking care of it.

I know first hand how people get a puppy, then once they realize it's getting a bit too big they abandon it in the street.

I know first hand how people get a puppy, then when the dog gets a little older and displays behaviour they don't like because they have never been trained, they abandon it in the street.

And they can do all that get away with it, because nobody in society at large actually cares.

There have also been a large scale social media campaign by certain groups (Islamists and nationalists) in the last few years to demonize dogs in order to have the government murder them en masse. Same accounts would flood Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Turkish subs on Reddit with fake news of dogs killing children. How people get attacked by dogs etc. This campaign became very active in the last 4-5 year period. That's why you have people here telling you "dogs kill hundreds of children and attack people" when so many of them have been shown to be fake. Some asshole even got busted on camera literally taking poop out of his pocket and placing it on a bus seat to frame and accuse a dog of shitting on a public bus. The story became very popular in some circles here in Turkey. The dog in question was a well-known stray dog in Istanbul named Boji.

Anyway, in contrast to those sensationalized and often fake news and random anecdotes about how dogs are aggressive and randomly attack people, what is well proven beyond any shadow of a doubt is how dogs are treated in this country. And anybody who tries to downvote me and argue with me can watch those videos of dogs getting murdered with a shovel by repeatedly hitting them in the head. Dogs living in appalling, heart wrenching conditions on the streets and in shelters. They can look at the investigate work animal rights groups have shown how government shelters mass murder dogs and dump them in mass graves. Many with their heads cut off, their stomachs shredded and limbs torn apart. They can look at how government shelters literally sedated dogs, put them in garbage bags and buried them alive en masse. They can look at how they murdered them by injecting bleach into their veins.