I've written about Istanbul's cats before, but there are plenty of dogs here too. And their story is far sadder.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the mayor of Constantinople at the time decided to rid the city of man's four-legged friends. He couldn't come up with anything better than simply relocating all the dogs to one of the smallest of the Prince Islands — Hayırsızada. How they were supposed to find food and survive on an area of 0.05 square kilometers was never quite explained. As a result of this forced resettlement, tens of thousands of animals died from hunger or drowned trying to escape the island.

Soon after, Istanbul experienced a major earthquake (around 7.3 magnitude). It suddenly clicked in the heads of residents: "God is punishing us for what we did." Meanwhile, the genocide of Armenians was in full swing, but for some reason that didn't bother anyone. All the surviving animals were quickly brought back from the island to the city.

Since then, dogs have been treated much better. People feed them, look after them, and today they're all chipped. But they never earned the kind of love comparable to what cats receive.