In 1911, in an event called “Hayırsızada Dog Massacre”, the Governor of Istanbul ordered the stray dogs in the streets to be rounded up and exiled to Sivriada. About 80,000 dogs were killed during the ordeal, mostly due to hunger and thirst on the barren land of the island, and some due to drowning as they tried to escape the horrible conditions of the island. A severe earthquake which immediately followed the event was perceived by the local as “a punishment by God for abandoning the dogs.” That is why the island is known both as Sivriada and Hayırsızada.
Matt’s Thoughts:
When I first read about the Governor of Istanbul rounding up all the dogs and placing them on an island, I thought that it was just someone explaining the Wes Anderson movie ISLE OF DOGS to me very poorly. But the more I looked into the story, the further I researched, I was completely flabbergasted at how this was even remotely allowed to happen.
But then I looked at it from a different perspective. In many major US Cities, the unhoused problem continues to grow. I’ve lived up and down the West Coast my entire life, and we have a serious issue with homelessness. And many people are quite callous when discussing it.
If you apply that same level of disassociation to the officials of Turkey who were fed up with packs of feral dogs roaming the streets, you can kind of see WHY they did what they did. They swept the problem under the rug and thought that was the answer. But it wasn’t the answer. Not by a longshot.
The road to hell is paved in good intentions, and while I don’t think the Governor of Istanbul necessarily had the best intentions, you can understand the logic…no matter how dumb it was to begin with.
The moral here is to not ignore problems, but try to find a solution that benefits everyone.
About DEEP LORE
Deep Lore is a weekly history podcast hosted by Matt Jarbo. Each episode will go into scary True Crime stories, adventures of the unexplained, Pop Culture Lore, Internet Oddities, and even the occasional Reddit Story. This podcast is for people who are interested in the strange and obsessed with The Weird. The Wild. The WTF.
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