TexasDevilDog
04-08-2006, 12:09 AM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1748605,00.html
When I visited Turkey last week on an inaugural London-to-Ankara flight, I decided the country was clearly ripe for membership of the European Union. Only a short walk from my hotel I found a Marks & Spencer, a McDonald's, a Body Shop and a Mothercare. I could have been in Milton Keynes.
But on the flight home next day, a stewardess gave me a copy of the Daily Telegraph that threatened to change my view. It contained a story from Ankara, the city I had just left, bearing the headline Muslims Accused of Killing "Unclean" Dogs. The report said a Turkish vet caring for stray animals had come across hundreds of dead dogs in a municipal dump. These were said to have been left there by city workers who liked to round up, torture and kill dogs because they believed them "unclean".
This made me wonder if Turkey really is ready to join Europe. True, its people seemed charming, intelligent and civilised; and its capital city could boast an M&S. But this was no way to treat a dog. Furthermore, the report included the distressing detail that at least two of the dead dogs had been sexually abused. Why would you want sexually to abuse a dog if you considered it "unclean"? It made no sense, but it suggested that the founder of modern Turkey, the great Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had died before Europeanising his country as fully as he would have liked.
When I visited Turkey last week on an inaugural London-to-Ankara flight, I decided the country was clearly ripe for membership of the European Union. Only a short walk from my hotel I found a Marks & Spencer, a McDonald's, a Body Shop and a Mothercare. I could have been in Milton Keynes.
But on the flight home next day, a stewardess gave me a copy of the Daily Telegraph that threatened to change my view. It contained a story from Ankara, the city I had just left, bearing the headline Muslims Accused of Killing "Unclean" Dogs. The report said a Turkish vet caring for stray animals had come across hundreds of dead dogs in a municipal dump. These were said to have been left there by city workers who liked to round up, torture and kill dogs because they believed them "unclean".
This made me wonder if Turkey really is ready to join Europe. True, its people seemed charming, intelligent and civilised; and its capital city could boast an M&S. But this was no way to treat a dog. Furthermore, the report included the distressing detail that at least two of the dead dogs had been sexually abused. Why would you want sexually to abuse a dog if you considered it "unclean"? It made no sense, but it suggested that the founder of modern Turkey, the great Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, had died before Europeanising his country as fully as he would have liked.