In a city of cats, caretakers push to keep Istanbul’s strays alive

On a busy corridor in Istanbul’s Cihangir district, Hilary Sable descends from her top-floor apartment and enters her backyard. She has a job to do.

As soon as she steps outside, around 60 cats rush toward the sound of her voice, hungry for her attention and their next meal. Sable, now in her seventies, is an activist and the founder of Cihangir Cool for Cats, a nonprofit that helps vulnerable strays across Istanbul.

But with recent changes to animal welfare and rising costs due to inflation in Turkey, her work is getting much harder to do. 

“He’s got a big kink in his tail,” Sable said, pointing to a black cat. “He got hit with something. It could be a car door, it could be a motorbike. It happens more often than we like, we’ve scraped up so many off the sidewalk.”

She climbs a jagged set of stairs, which “hasn’t gotten any easier,” to a platform lined with wooden cat houses. Every cat here is under her care, and she knows them all by their names, illnesses, histories and when they first arrived in the neighborhood.

Sable first came to Istanbul 20 years ago from London and now operates her nonprofit Cihangir Cool for Cats, an organization that has been helping save animals living in the streets of Istanbul since 2010.

Animal welfare changes

In 2024 Turkish legislators passed amendments to Animal Protection Law no. 5199, which establishes a nationwide legal framework for the treatment and welfare of animals in Turkey. 

The amendments redefined stray and owned animals, required municipalities to keep collected strays in shelters rather than releasing them and expanded registration and shelter regulations, decisions that critics say abandons the country’s earlier commitment to humane population management. 

On November 24, Istanbul Governor Davut Gül signed a directive ordering “uncontrolled feeding” of stray animals to stop. The government has stated that stray animal feeding brings public safety risks, citing several incidences of dog attacks and pest populations.

Sable, however, feels that the new amendments are just a distraction.

“Smoke and mirrors,” Sable said. “It’s just to distract from the terrible situation the citizens find themselves in because of how the government has behaved. It’s just trying to blame someone else for how the government is taxing people, why inflation is so high.”

Data from the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey shows that inflation rates have been the highest in years. In 2022, inflation was recorded to be 70%, the previous year it was 20%. 

“They say don’t look at how you can’t pay your rent, look at that dog,” Sable added.

Burak Hatipoglu, owner of a cafe called İkivedört in Cihangir, has owned his business in the neighborhood for years. He says that he also opposes the law.

“They are pushing the stray animals to be sick and die on the street,” Hatipoglu said. “We need some very conscious people to lead all the charities. Now, people do these things on their own.”

Challenges of helping animals

Çetin Levo Bülent – another well-known cat-loving local in the Cihangir district – operates his own shelter in a park in Cihangir. But because of limited space and financial strain, he cannot care for as many of them as he would like. He began taking care of cats after his wife died, and says they bring him a sense of comfort. 

“I have an Airbnb, all money [goes] to cats, I sell shoes, all money [to cats],” Bülent said. “Six-seven-eight-nine years I don’t go on holiday, I spend it all on the cats.”

Bülent estimates he spends a bit more than 20,000₺ TL – around 400€ – on shelter expenses per month. His shelter is self-run and funded, he currently cares for a few dozen cats but feels stretched thin. 

“People dump cats here: sick cats, pregnant cats and litters and tiny kittens and just expect [Bülent] to deal with it,” Sable, who often works with Bülent, explained. “They just use him, he has so much to do.”

A large portion of Bülent and Sable’s costs come from cat food, which Turkey’s Ministry of Treasury and Finance considers a luxury item. Meaning it has an 18% value-added tax, while other animal feed and pet foods are taxed at either 1% or 0%. 

“I don’t go to cafe[s], I don’t go to restaurant[s], I don’t go to friends,” Bülent said. 

Sable shares the same sentiment. 

“We’re all the same,” Sable added. “I’m not paying 200₺ for a coffee, because that’s four cans of cat food.”

Sable’s group also helps others in Istanbul, acting as a support network for other animal welfare groups in the city. She says that grassroots community support has been a lifeline for the cats and the groups trying to help them.

“I work with other organizations like me,” Sable said. “Who I’ve given a start to and let advertise on my group to grow. It’s a question of just energizing those people and saying, ‘hey, you can do it too.’”

Like other non-governmental animal welfare organizations in Istanbul, Sable’s relies on community donations from both at home and abroad. All funds go directly toward the cats she says: 

“I don’t get a thing, [but] I let people post on my group for dire situations where they need help with vet bills or food bills for colonies they are feeding. They get the funding.”

How Istanbul got so many cats

While Istanbul’s cat population has no definite number, it has been estimated to be between a few hundred thousand to over a million. 

Dr. Kimberly Hart, an associate professor of anthropology at Buffalo State University in the United States, says that no one exactly knows how they arrived. 

“I think most likely that cats were domesticated in the Middle East,” Hart, who did a Fulbright research project on street animals around Turkey, explains. “A lot of people make the claim that all the ships had cats to control the mice population. That doesn't seem unreasonable to think that when the ships docked at the ports in Istanbul that they would have jumped off and gone around.”

Istanbul was first settled by Greeks in 660 BCE, but was then conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1453. The Ottomans brought with them the religion of Islam – which Hart says could have helped further embedded cats into the region:

“So cats and birds actually have a protected status in Islam,” Hart said. “It depends upon the particular school of Islamic theory or thought.”

Over 99% of Turks identify as Muslim, according to the Turkish government, and the majority practice under the Sunni denomination. In Sunni Islamic thought, animals are considered part of communities and the relationship between humans and animals is one of responsibility rather than ownership. Cruelty toward them is forbidden, and providing food, water, and care is viewed as a virtuous act.

On most streets in Istanbul, and especially in Cihangir which is known for its many cat residents, there are bowls of food and water set out for them. This is something Hart says is more of a recent trend. 

“I would say that the interest in feeding cats has become more obvious, probably in the last 20 or 30 years or so.” Hart said. “When I first went to Istanbul, I don't recall seeing any of these efforts to feed animals in the street. I'm sure people were, but they were not as obvious as all the shelters and the little bowls and stuff like that.”

Hart says this adds to the sense of community the locals and cats share. 

Looking ahead

Sable says she hopes to continue her work at Cihangir Cool for Cats for the rest of her life, and to pass the torch to someone who she thinks will do it justice after she is gone. 

What comes next for the city’s street animals is unclear. The new policies could reshape decades of informal caretaking, and some volunteers already feel stretched thin. But among the shelters tucked near apartment buildings and the food bowls lining Cihangir’s sidewalks, people like Sable and Bülent continue to do what they’ve always done: step in where others might not, determined to keep their corner of the city alive—one cat at a time.

“We can’t change the government,” Sable said. “But we can make a positive difference—right here. May life treat you the way you treat animals.”