PodcastAnimal rights activist partners with Istanbul Mayor İmamoğlu on app aiming to protect street animals
As countless stray animals live difficult lives on the streets of Istanbul, the city municipality has teamed up with an animal rights activist to develop an sophisticated app aimed at meeting the needs of the city's street animals and finding them permanent homes.
Duvar English
An app that aims to the track, document, provide basic needs and homes for street animals in Istanbul is being developed via a partnership between animal rights activist and businesswoman İpek Kıraç and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, news portal T24 reported on Oct. 22.
“We can only improve the lives ofstreet animals if we work together as a team,” Kıraç said, addingthat they eventually aim to spread the app, called SemtPati(Neighborhood Paw) across Turkey and are expecting the support ofanimal lovers.
Kıraç thanked İmamoğlu for hissupport and emphasized that the project is a partnership betweendistrict municipalities, veterinarians and volunteers.
“We all see it every day. Even though they are homeless, hungry, thirsty and without love and have lost their trust in us, they still gaze into our eyes and our palms with hope. Although they see us, unfortunately most of the time we are not interested or able to take care of them,” Kıraç said.
The SemtPati app is slated to be asophisticated program that involves numerous features geared towardtracking animals, indicating who is feeding them and/or providingmedication in what area, veterinary issues such as spaying/neuteringas well as adoption.
“There is this worldwide perceptionthat if you build shelters with the capacities for thousands or tensof thousands of dogs that you can just stuff them in there. Neitherthe law nor the people will permit this. Respect for that which isliving does not allow this either. In this sense, we needed absolutepractical implementations to solve the problems of local governmentsthat are stuck in such a way,” İmamoğlu said.