Between Care and Violence: The Dogs of Istanbul

with Mine Yıldırım

hosted by Önder Eren Akgül

| What does canine life reveal about the human worlds of modern Istanbul? In this special collaboration with Keyman Podcast at Northwestern University, we sit down with Mine Yıldırım, curator of the exhibition "Between Care and Violence: The Dogs of Istanbul," to discuss the intersecting histories of cruelty and compassion towards animals in Turkey's largest city from the late Ottoman period to the present.   

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What does canine life reveal about the human worlds of modern Istanbul? In this special collaboration with Keyman Podcast at Northwestern University, we sit down with Mine Yıldırım, curator of the exhibition "Between Care and Violence: The Dogs of Istanbul," to discuss the intersecting histories of cruelty and compassion towards animals in Turkey's largest city from the late Ottoman period to the present.

Contributor Bios

Mine Yıldırım is an assistant professor (Kadir Has University, Istanbul) of politics, researcher in urban and critical animal studies, and animal rights advocate. She received her PhD in Politics (2021) from The New School, New York, with a dissertation titled Between Care and Violence: Street Dogs of Istanbul, tracing the history and politics of Istanbul’s street dogs from the early twentieth century to today. Her research examines urban animal worlds, myriad entanglements of law, politics, everyday practices in the making of trans-species bonds, affective regimes of labor, killing and caring traversing human and more-than-human worlds. Her work, drawing on ethnographic and historical approaches, has appeared in books, journals, exhibits, and radio broadcasts, bridging academic research with community-based animal rights advocacy. Her archive research Between Care and Violence: Street Dogs of Istanbul was recently exhibited in Lives of Animals (curated by Joanna Zielinska) at Salt Beyoğlu (2025). She is currently preparing a book manuscript of the same title and developing archival and ethnographic research-led curatorial practices to integrate animal rights advocacy to broader publics in contemporary arts, humanities and social sciences.

Önder Eren Akgül is a historian of capitalism, political economy, and the environment in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Modern Middle East. He received his Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University in 2022. He is currently the 2024-2026 Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University, where he is working on his first book manuscript examining the development of a socio-legal order rooted in austerity, violence, and dispossession in the Late Ottoman Empire.

Credits

Episode No. 588
Release Date: 13 June 2026
Recording Location: Istanbul
Sound production by Can Gümüş
Music courtesy of Sato Moughalian
Bibliography and images courtesy of Mine Yıldırım

Further Listening

	Egemen Yılgür	418 7/6/19	İstanbul'un Teneke Mahalleleri
	Lauren Davis	363 6/22/18	Istanbul and the Ottoman Olfactory Heritage
	Nurçin İleri	263 8/26/16	Osmanlı İstanbul’unda Gece ve Sokaklar
	Bathsheba Demuth	439 12/6/19	An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
	Suja Sawafta	414 6/14/19	The Environmental Politics of Abdul Rahman Munif

Images

Image 1. Mine Yıldırım, ‘The Lives of Animals’, SALT Beyoǧlu, Istanbul, April 2025, photograph



Image 2. Capture of Stray Dogs, 1910, photograph, Pierre de Gigord Collection



Image 3. Jean Weinberg, Street dogs exiled to Hayırsızada by the Young Turks, 1910, photograph



Image 4. Kara Kulak, Illustration in Alay, no. 2, 1920, print illustration



Image 5. Unknown artist, Illustration in Yeni Geveze, no. 70, 1910, print illustration



Image 6. Utucuyan, Illustration in Karagöz, no. 207, 1910, print illustration



Image 7. Unknown artist, Illustration in Karagöz, no. 312, 1911, print illustration



Image 8. Ercümend, Illustration in Karikatür, no. 100, 1937, print illustration



Image 9. İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Kısırkaya Stray Animal Care Center, aerial view, 2017, photograph by Mine Yıldırım



Image 10. Dogs exiled and abandoned near Tepeören Street Animal Shelter, 2018, photograph by Mine Yıldırım



Image 11. Dogs abandoned along Northern Marmara Motorway, Section 4, 2017, photograph by Mine Yıldırım



Image 12. Dogs abandoned along Northern Marmara Motorway, Section 5, 2017, photograph by Mine Yıldırım



Image 13. Collective, The Rescue of Firuze, 2024

Further Reading

Exhibitions

The Four-Legged Municipality: Street Dogs of Istanbul
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-four-legged-municipality-istanbul-research-institute/uQUBF6Zy7KPVLQ?hl=en

Between Care and Violence: Street Dogs of Istanbul
Archive Exhibition, Mine Yıldırım
As part of the exhibition ‘Lives of Animals’, SALT Beyoğlu
https://saltonline.org/en/2874/exhibition-the-lives-of-animals

Publications

A Dog-Eat-Dog Empire: Violence and Affection on the Streets of Ottoman Cairo, Alan Mikhail (Duke University Press, 2014)

Cihangir Gündoğdu, “The State and the Stray Dogs in Late Ottoman Istanbul: From Unruly Subjects to Servile Friends,” Middle Eastern Studies 54, no. 4 (2018): 555–574, https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2018.1432482

Ekrem Işın, “Dört Ayaklı Belediye ya da İstanbul Köpekleri,” in İstanbul’da Gündelik Hayat (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2014).

Cihangir Gündoğdu, “Dogs Feared and Dogs Loved: Human-Dog Relations in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Society & Animals (2020). 

A. Nazmi, Hayvan Yetiştirme Fazileti (Dersaadet [İstanbul]: Matbaa-i Âmire, 1922).

Catherine Pinguet, İstanbul’un Köpekleri (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2009).

Catherine Pinguet, “Street Dogs of Istanbul,” in The Four-Legged Municipality, ed. Ekrem Işın and Gülru Tanman (Istanbul: Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Istanbul Research Institute, 2016), 23–57.

B. Melikoğlu, “Türkiye’de Kurulan İlk Hayvanları Koruma Derneğinin Tarihsel Gelişimi,” Veteriner Hekimleri Derneği Dergisi 80, no. 1 (2009): 37–44.

Mine Yıldırım, “Sürgünden İtlafa, ‘Mahallinde Öldürmeden’ Ötanaziye: Hayırsızada Vâkâsının Ardından İstanbul’da Sokak Köpekleri,” Reflektif 5, no. 3 (2024), https://doi.org/10.47613/reflektif.2024.195.

Mine Yıldırım, “When Care Faces Violence: Anticipatory Grief, Chronic Vigilance, and Ambiguous Loss Among Street Dog Care-Givers in Istanbul,” Animals 16, no. 4 (2026): 559, https://doi.org/10.3390/ani16040559.

Mine Yıldırım, “A Compassionate Correspondence: On the Humane Killing of Street Dogs in Istanbul,” YILLIK: Annual of Istanbul Studies (2022).

Deniz Dölek-Sever, Hayvan Tarihi: Osmanlı-Türkiye Geçmişine Türlerarası Perspektifle Bakmak, REFLEKTİF Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi: Cilt 5 Sayı 2 (2024): Haziran.

M. A. Gündoğdu, “Tanzimat Edebiyatında Köpekler Hakkında Bir Tartışma,” Karabatak, no. 4 (2019): 52–55.

A. Koşum, “İslam Hukukunda Hayvanların Yaşama Hakları Bağlamında Köpeklerin Öldürülmeleri Sorunu,” İslam Hukuku Araştırmaları Dergisi (2015).

A. M. Gürler, B. Melikoğlu, and Ş. Osmanağaoğlu, “A Historical Evaluation of Animal Protection Efforts of Non-Governmental Organizations in Turkey,” Kafkas Üniversitesi Veterinerlik Fakültesi Dergisi (2011).

Ekrem Yücel, “General View on the Hadithes Regarding Dogs / Köpekle İlgili Rivayetlere Genel Bakış,” Turkish Studies (2013): 2141–2163, http://dx.doi.org/10.7827/TurkishStudies.6655

Abdullah Cevdet, İstanbul’da Köpekler (İstanbul: Matbaa-i İçtihad, 1909).

Edhem Pertev Paşa, “Av’ave-nâme,” Mecmua-i Fünûn, no. 38 (Cemaziyelevvel 1283/1866): 229–240.

Işın, Ekrem. “Street Dogs of Istanbul.” In The Four-Legged Municipality, edited by Ekrem Işın and Gülru Tanman, pp.  Istanbul: Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation Istanbul Research Institute, 2016.

İrvin Cemil Schick, “İstanbul’da 1910’da Gerçekleşen Büyük Köpek İtlâfı: Bir Mekân Üzerinde Çekişme Vakası,” Toplumsal Tarih, no. 200 (Ağustos 2010): 22–33.

Servet-i Fünûn, “Köpeklerin İtlafı,” no. 45 (9 Kanun-ı Sani 1307): 224–225.

Taner Timur, “XIX. Yüzyılda İstanbul’un Sokak Köpekleri,” Tarih ve Toplum, no. 117 (Eylül 1993): 138–142.

Cemil Topuzlu, İstibdat-Meşrutiyet-Cumhuriyet Devirlerinde 80 Yıllık Hatıralarım, haz. Cemalettin Topuzlu (İstanbul: Topuzlu Yayınları, 2002).

Palmira Brummett, “Dogs, Women, Cholera, and Other Menaces in the Streets: Cartoon Satire in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–11,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (1995).

Dominick LaCapra, History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).