ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the deportation of Istanbul’s stray dogs, with European guidance and due to hygienicrequirements of amodernizing city, to a small island off the coast in 1910, where the animals starved todeath. Taking its lead from Jacques Derrida’sThe Animal That Therefore I am, the chapter addresses two accounts of thedog massacre, Catherine Pinguet’sLes Chiens d’Istanbul(2008)andSerge Avedikian’s award-winning short filmThe Barking Island, while addressingthe perspectivesof several witnesses and critics, including Kurdish philosopher and Young TurkAbdullahCevdet, caricaturist SEM, Mark Twain, and Sir Mark Sykes.
