The 'foreign powers' have now set their sights on our cats and dogs!

We are a nation that doesn't take things too seriously, but others certainly do. Let me give you an example. The repercussions in Turkey of the Bill on Amendments to the Animal Protection Law, known publicly as the 'Massacre Law,' are well known to you. But I am going to tell you how it has affected tourism, known as the industry without chimneys. 

Don't say 'foreign powers'—what do others care about our law? 

About two weeks ago, there was a protest in London, the capital of England. British animal rights activists protested the law with banners reading, "We are not going on vacation to a country where animals are massacred." 

Now, this protest has turned into campaigns on social media. Unfortunately, the campaign to not go on vacation to a country where stray animals are massacred has started to gain traction. 

In a poll on the Mirror newspaper's website asking, 'Would you boycott Turkey because of the Stray Animals Law?', 71 percent of participants voted 'yes,' while 29 percent voted 'no.'

Yet, in the last two years, the British had started to choose Turkey again.

Life is connected by such a chain that everything we do can turn into another reaction. 

But it's not like it matters if the British don't come, right?

While we are on the subject of foreigners, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) has announced the Housing Sales Statistics for July 2024.

According to the data released by TÜİK, housing sales to foreigners in July decreased by 16.1 percent compared to the same month of the previous year, reaching 2 thousand 350.

Despite the decrease, the highest number of housing sales by country of citizenship in July were made to citizens of the Russian Federation with 485, Ukraine with 171, and Germany with 162. For some reason, Arab investors did not make it onto this list. 

Wondering why the housing that Arabs have bought site by site, block by block, especially in Istanbul, does not appear on the list, I called a real estate consultant friend of mine. 

I asked, "Has the Arabs' interest in Turkey faded?"

"How could that be? I think TÜİK is reporting individual purchases," he said. He stated that some Arab investors purchase real estate as companies and that these might not have been included in the reporting under that status. He also added that Syrians who are in our country as temporary refugees are not counted as foreigners.

I don't know how true this claim is, but it didn't seem entirely illogical...