There is an ongoing campaign on Change.org to end the confinement and slaughter of carriage horses in Prince Islands.
In 2019, a total of 170 carriage horses had died in the first eight-and-a-half months on Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands as reported by Islands Municipality. Apart from natural deaths and glanders, a contagious and fatal disease in horses, it was said that the main reason of the horse deaths stems from overworking. Because the number of carriage horses on the islands amounts to about 500 in the winter, whereas it goes up to over 1,000 in summer months, when tourists flock to the islands.
As the locals voiced, whereas the number of horses per square meter was the highest on the Princes’ Islands in the world, but still there was no veterinary allocated for carriage horses, ambulance or a horse hospital on the islands.
The poor conditions of the horses on the islands continue to be a problem and animal rights activists have stressed the horses suffer extremely, saying the carriages eventually lead to the death of many horses.
You can read the campaign content below.
To sign a Change.org campaign to end the confinement and slaughter of carriage horses in Prince Islands, please click here.
“Right now, on the Prince Islands, Turkey, more than 1700 horses face starvation, disease, confinement to inadequate stables and myriad other conditions that are inhumane in every sense of the word. Already, in December of 2019, approximately 120 of these magnificent animals were unlawfully taken from their owners in the dark of night and were put to death. These are just the executions we know of.
For years, on the Prince Islands, a thriving carriage horse industry moved tourists, goods and everyday people throughout the islands’ protected areas where horse and carriage were the only legal means of transport. Recently, caving into pressure from land developers and manufacturing industry, under the guise of saving the horses from a life of labor and burden, the government of Turkey banned the use of horses on the Prince Islands. This has left families with no way to feed themselves, or the horses they rely upon for their livelihood. It is a land and power grab, pure and simple. These are working animals; and if they do not work, they are not fed or cared for.
Many of the horses that once were the center of the carriage businesses have been reduced to life as serum producing livestock; routinely injected with microbes and toxins in order to be regularly bled for the medical industry.
We need your voice, your help, to send clear message to the Politicians of Turkey that these animals need to return to the way of life they, and their owners have lived for generations.”
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