ERİSA DAUTAJ ŞENERDEMISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News
Many vegetarians in Turkey find themselves in a tough spot this week, torn between their religious and dietary practices as their countrymen sacrifice animals to mark the Kurban Bayram (Feast of the Sacrifice) holiday.
“Even members of the Vegetarians Club in Istanbul sacrifice animals for Kurban Bayram,” Ebru Arıman, the group’s chairwoman, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.
The holiday, which traditionally involves slaughtering a sheep or cow as a way of honoring God, does not only create qualms among vegetarians, Arıman added. She said even people who normally eat meat sometimes oppose the ritual sacrifice of animals due to physical and psychological pain the livestock experience.
“Although sacrificing will keep being practiced on religious grounds, one must make sure this is not turned into a painful process,” Berfin Melikoğlu, an ethics professor at Ondokuz Mayıs University’s Veterinary Faculty in the Black Sea province of Samsun, told the Daily News. Calling animal welfare essential, she said sheep or cows should be treated well before and during the sacrifice. In addition, she said, the slaughtering “must be done out of children’s sight” in order not to create emotional or psychological harm.
“Looking it at from an animal-rights point of view, I personally believe [animals’] lives must not be taken through sacrificing,” Seçil Aracı, a vegetarian and a philosophy Ph.D. candidate at Boğazici University in Istanbul, told the Daily News. She agreed with Melikoğlu that if people really believe they have to sacrifice animals to meet their religious obligations, it must be done properly, causing a minimum level of physical or psychological pain.
Though the ritual slaughtering during the Kurban Bayram holiday has become controversial, some believe the story behind the tradition actually highlights the importance of animals. The holiday commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who gave him a ram to sacrifice instead. “Thus, sacrificing an animal is as dear as sacrificing one’s own child, as interpreted in the thesis of Adil Bor, a professor at Haseki Theological Education Center in Istanbul,” Aracı said.
Turkish vegetarians such as Aracı are not only focused on the Kurban Bayram holiday, but also fighting throughout the year for the rights of animals, that they say are often mistreated in industrial farms before they end up on dinner tables.
“In my childhood, I believed that animals have rights too, but I did not know how far this notion could be extended,” Aracı told the Daily News. She decided to become a vegetarian four years ago, after her research for her master thesis showed her how animals were treated in factory farms. “I had doubts in the beginning as to whether I could survive without eating meat,” she said, adding that no excuse was enough to clear her conscience about the terrible treatment animals receive in such facilities.
According to Aracı, people have been eating the meat of animals for a very long time, without even questioning the fact that animals are as aware of their existence as human beings are of theirs. Animals have cognitive abilities that allow them to build social relations among themselves and with people, Aracı said. “Even the concept of grand-parenting exists in cows,” she added.
Even on farms that are considered “modern,” animals experience a lot of psychological and physical violence, said Karanfil Soyhun, a philosophy professor at Boğaziçi University. She told the Daily News in a recent interview that they suffer broken bones, are injected with hormones to make them grow more than normal and experience pain during the milking process. Soyhun has been a lacto-vegetarian – someone who consumes no animal products other than milk – for about three years and said she was planning to soon quit consuming milk and milk products to protest the treatment of animals at dairy farms.
“Eating animals is a luxury,” Soyhun said, adding that although most people believe eating meat is essential for their health, many studies show the opposite to be true. “Sometimes [eating meat] can even be harmful for our health,” she said.
Turkish doctors generally share the common view that eating meat is essential, Arıman told the Daily News, adding that she has been a vegetarian for five years and has been healthy the entire time. “Although the variety of food is more limited for vegetarians, we can get all nourishment necessary for a healthy life from vegetables,” she said, adding that Turkish doctors should be more aware in this regard.
Vegetarianism has been practiced since ancient times not only for ethical reasons, but due to nutritional and health concerns, and recently for economic and environmental ones as well. “Raising animals [for food] is one of the main factors that cause global warming,” Soyhun said, noting the contribution of factory farms to climate-changing emissions. According to a 2006 study by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental degradation worldwide, and modern practices of raising animals for food contribute on a “massive scale” to air and water pollution, land degradation, climate change and loss of biodiversity.
In addition, Aracı said, raising animals for food is not economically efficient and its elimination would significantly contribute to reducing global poverty. “We [consume meat] thinking it tastes good, without considering the economic rationale behind it,” she said, adding that limiting meat consumption would allow resources to be reallocated to resolve poverty issues all over the globe.