Do not disturb our balance...

“I believed your red was red/ I believed your purple was purple/ Your God is great, amen/ Your poetry is a proper poem/ And the smoke is a bonus/ I have made peace with all the trees/ Whether the crowd is there or not/ I lost it in the streets and found it in my pocket/ But the streets were like this/ The trees were like that/ But what is your name/ Do not disturb my balance.”

How beautifully the great poet Turgut Uyar describes it in his poem “Balance” (Denge)… Balance is practically a manifesto against those who want to force their own truths upon you, those who want to dominate you, those who want to shape your life with a stick in their hand, those who act as moral guardians, those who look down on you, those who want to dictate what you should say, and the self-appointed police of life.

Just as it is important for a person to find their inner balance, their harmony with their surroundings, and their adaptation to society, it is equally important to respect the balance of the environment. Housing projects, buildings, and piles of rubble dumped in animals' habitats have gradually disrupted the balance of nature and narrowed the living spaces of animals. On the other hand, the changing migration routes and times due to the climate crisis have often caused animals living in nature to approach human living spaces. The herds of wild boars we have started to see in town squares in warmer regions over the last few years are one of the best examples of this.

The law that the AKP government is trying to implement regarding street dogs is a law that will cause this balance to be disrupted to the point of creating an anomaly. Of course, if there are dogs in certain neighborhoods that are aggressive enough to prevent children from going to school or hinder daily life, and if there are complaints, they can be taken to shelters by municipalities. However, legalizing an order to kill street dogs will also open the door for certain human-like individuals, emboldened by this, to carry out mass slaughters with their own hands. That is why the key word here is balance. Finding a middle ground without playing with the balance of nature and without putting the security balance of human life at risk is possible through the spaying, vaccination, and returning of animals to their habitats.

When this balance is toyed with in the form of a mass slaughter, we may find ourselves living side-by-side with rats, wild boars, and perhaps many other predators and diseases that we cannot even imagine today. If you add the humanitarian and conscientious burden of this to the equation, you can guess that the price to be paid could be very high.

The pandemic period was a time when, as people retreated into their homes, the balance of nature shifted in favor of the wild, and even forest animals descended into city squares across the world, sometimes resulting in fascinating photographs. There were many lessons to be learned from this process, which we have forgotten all too quickly...

Even if we do not learn these lessons, fortunately, there are scientists working on them. In a special issue published in 2020 by the World Economic Forum, based in Switzerland, the focus shifted from comparing countries according to the global competitiveness index to finding fundamental ways to revitalize, improve, and redesign national economies in order to increase human development and harmony with the environment (WEF, 2020). In the same report, and in many international reports published that year, it was emphasized that another wave of epidemics like COVID-19 was expected in the coming years. Countries of the world were warned to prepare for the climate crisis, global pandemics, and disasters.

Given this situation, attempting to do more in our geography, where we have already played enough with the balance of nature, could result in a catastrophe.

I repeat, I am not even getting into the humanitarian and conscientious part... As Turgut Uyar said, “we believed your red was red, your purple was purple” but do not disturb our balance. Withdraw this law that will pave the way for dog massacres. It is clear that you have never experienced or known what love for dogs or loyalty is. As someone who grew up with this love, I say that you will never be able to carry this curse. Never.