NO HUGS OR HANDSHAKES: ANOTHER BAYRAM MARKED AMID CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

HORSES saved from pulling carriages on Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands have triggered a new scandal years later. Investigations have revealed that the animals, sent all across Turkey by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB), disappeared. İBB and the municipalities they delivered the animals to have come under fire, while new reports show that some of the horses may have been secretly smuggled into or sold to Iraq. Animal rights activists, in the meantime, are questioning the state of the remaining horses on the islands which are reportedly kept in unsanitary conditions.

İBB delivered the horses to several municipalities across the country after a ban on horse-drawn carriages was enacted on the city’s Princes’ Islands in 2019. Critics have claimed that it was the municipality’s responsibility to take care of animals. In response, İBB in a written statement on their official website claimed that the horses, which were transferred to public institutions and organizations free of charge, are now the responsibility of the relevant bodies and that İBB no longer holds any responsibility. However, animal rights activists are not on the same side as İBB, whose treatment of the horses has outraged them and led to protests lasting for more than two years.

The volunteers of the Horses of Princes’ Islands Platform called on the authorities to investigate the situation, stating Wednesday that they were worried about the fate of 860 horses sent to different provinces and 114 horses in stables on one of the Princes’ Islands. Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Zeynep Alper, a volunteer from the Horses of Princes’ Islands Platform, said that as a result of imprisonment the horses are dying.

“Unfortunately, İBB is still trying to mislead the public instead of improving the conditions of the horses, freeing the horses that it has imprisoned and tracing the lost horses,” she said.

Alper and other volunteers accused Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and İBB of lying. “İmamoğlu is not telling the truth. He says, ‘Horses are happy,’ but in fact, they are imprisoned. He says, ‘We are taking good care’ but they never even take the horses out. He says, ‘Everyone can visit the stable’ but they do not allow us to enter them,” she said. Melis Yılmaz, another volunteer from the platform, pointed to a scandal involving Dörtyol municipality in southern Turkey where dozens of horses went missing. She said the process was not sufficiently supervised and therefore İBB is guilty. Yılmaz addressed the authorities by saying:

“The horses are being transferred since June 2020. We learned from the Dörtyol municipality scandal that the horses are being handed over to a third party, we announced this but no one cares. We have been demanding answers for months but the only time the parties offer an explanation is when the issue becomes a political controversy. They are not transparent and do not take into account the warnings of those who have been closely following the case of the horses. İmamoğlu said he would carry out follow-up inspections of the horses in their new homes. He should have made these inspections and explained where the horses are now and how many are alive.”