Turkish animal rights activists were outraged when a man who was convicted of animal cruelty by killing a cat on New Year’s Day in İstanbul was allowed by a court to walk free on Wednesday although he was given the maximum sentence possible for the crime.
The brutal killing of the cat, named “Eros,” received widespread coverage in the Turkish media after CCTV footage showed İbrahim Keloğlon violently kicking the cat until it lay motionless in an elevator in İstanbul’s Başakşehir neighborhood.
Keloğlan, who was briefly held in pretrial detention due to the public outrage, stood trial and was given a prison sentence of 15 months, which was overturned by an appeals court. His retrial, held on Wednesday at an İstanbul court, was closely followed by the media, animal rights activists and some opposition politicians.
The court handed down a prison sentence of three years to Keloğlan at his retrial on charges of deliberately killing an animal but reduced it to two-and-a-half years for good behavior, which led to protests in the courtroom.
He was placed under judicial control measures that include a travel ban and was then released.
Although the country’s justice minister, Yılmaz Tunç, described the sentence handed down to Keloğlan as the “harshest penalty” issued under Turkey’s animal protection laws so far, animal rights activists complained about a lack of justice while calling for harsher punishments for acts of animal cruelty.
Turkey is home to a massive number of stray dogs and cats, and there are frequent reports in the media about acts of violence and abuse of the animals. The government is criticized for not taking the necessary measures to protect animals from violence and not pressing ahead with harsher penalties for the perpetrators of animal abuse.