Our Story
Haydok Patileri is the animal-welfare work of the Hacettepe University Animal Rights and Nature Conservation Society. For more than fifteen years, volunteer students and academics have cared for the cats and dogs living on the Beytepe campus.
2008: a poisoning on campus
Our story did not begin when the shelter was demolished.
In 2008, with the growing number of dogs on the Beytepe campus given as the reason, the animals were poisoned. But it was not only dogs who lost their lives; cats, birds, foxes and hedgehogs were caught in the killing too.
Under the lead of Melek Ayas, a lecturer who would not let it pass in silence, students and academics came together. They took on the feeding, the vaccinations and the treatment of the campus animals out of their own pockets.
The solidarity that began that day became the ground the work stands on. We are still carrying the effort and the responsibility that started years ago.
A community was formed
After the poisoning we organised instead of dispersing: the Hacettepe University Animal Rights and Nature Conservation Community, HAYDOK, was formally founded. Today there are around two hundred of us, all students, academics and graduates.
The work is the same every day: food collected from the canteen goes out twice a day, at noon and in the evening, to fixed points across the campus. Alongside it come neutering, vaccinations, veterinary care and rehoming. For years, some fifty dogs and more than a hundred cats at Beytepe were looked after this way.
Some of them became the campus mascots. Tomris had lived at Beytepe since 2012; she did not care for walking, so she took the city buses, and the drivers knew her well enough never to ask for a ticket. Tomris is in her own home now.
The morning of 21 July 2026
The living quarters that volunteer students and academics had looked after for more than fifteen years were demolished by diggers on the morning of 21 July 2026. Thirty-eight dogs were torn from their home, among them the old, the ones on regular medication and the ones who need special care. The medicines and the equipment the volunteers had paid for out of their own pockets were looted.
We did not give up. We got every one of our campus children out of the shelter and into boarding. They are safe now, but they will never go back to the campus where they were born and grew up.
In figures
- 38
- Dogs in the enclosure when it was demolishedAll of them lost their home in a single morning.
- ₺1,000,000+
- What we owe in boarding and veterinary care₺750,000 of that is vet bills alone. We try every month, and we cannot keep up.
Do not leave our children on their own
Our dogs in boarding need foster supporters who can give something every month.