These
two dogs are what Turkish people refer to as "sokak kopegi"--a generic
name that means "street dog." If they were in a village where people were
raising sheep, they might even be called "coban kopegi"--a generic name
that means "shepherd's dogs." According to the locals, these two are half-siblings,
possibly full sibs. And the fact is, they are crossbreeds. No one in Turkey
would ever call either of these dogs "Kangal Dogs"--unless perhaps they
were puppies, and some clueless foreigner wanted to buy one. And why not?
These are perfectly fine dogs, and they might make someone a fine pet or
guard dog. But they are not anything approaching a "breed".
These dogs live in Fethiye--a tourist resort on the Mediterranean Sea, with a few sheep-herding villages scattered about the area but 600km from Sivas Kangal--the most intensive sheepherding area in Turkey.
Later that evening, I met the resident Kangal Dog--a nice enough specimen that greeted me briefly on the dark road as I was going for a walk by the sea. He came and let me touch him, and I ran to get some bread for him, and my camera. But he had disappeared. I asked around my hotel, and was directed to another hotel-restaurant, where the owner was very happy to tell me all about his Kangal Dog. The man had bought the dog from Sivas during a business trip. The dog did not show up again so I could get his photo--he was out patrolling his territory. But as I enjoyed a beer with the local shopkeepers, and we talked about dogs, it was clear that my new friends all adored this Kangal Dog, and told me that he had sired half of the dogs in this end of Fethiye--including crossbred litters from their own dogs.
They then pointed out to me the other active stud dog in the neighborhood:
The owner identified
this dog as an "Alman Kurt Kopegi"--a German Wolf-dog, as they're sometimes
called in Turkey. But he sounded dubious as he said it, and gave me a shy
smile--I don't think even he believed that the dog is purebred. But
a German Shepherd cross? Certainly. And this dog roamed freely, greeting
tourists, taking handouts, and breeding hot bitches at every opportunity.
These Fethiye street dogs are fine pets, and friendly to the tourists... but how would they work with a flock of sheep? It would be iffy. No Turkish shepherd in his right mind would take one home. But cleaned up and fattened a little, these dogs would all pass for "Anatolian Shepherds"--especially the two at the top-- and indeed such dogs were picked up by tourists and military service members, brought to the US, and registered as "Anatolian Shepherds."
According to the Anatolian fancy, as long as they are of sufficient size and have pendant ears, all of the dogs within the magically impermeable borders of Turkey are the same: Never mind that the street dogs differ markedly from dogs bred in intensive sheepherding regions, never mind that a military outpost might not be the best place to look for a good dog, never mind the tourist areas where there is nothing but mongrels--all the big, floppy-eared dogs in Turkey are the same, according to these American and British ASD fanciers. Yet if you're on the Black Sea or in far eastern Turkey, the "rough-coated Anatolians" magically become Russian Ovcharkas or Mideast Caucasian Ovcharkas as soon as you cross the border. What's up with that?
But there you have it--- the dog situation in Turkey, in a nutshell.. Unless you are travelling in an intensive sheep-herding area, where the villagers all depend on their dogs, you cannot expect to find any homogeneity in breeding, nor much concern for the quality of working dogs that are produced. In Sivas Kangal region, people do care--they depend on their dogs for their living. And their dogs are famous because they are uniform, they breed, true, and most importantly--they WORK. This is what we in the West codify, with breed standards and registries and other such paraphernalia, as a BREED.
Here's a very good article on "what constitutes a breed" by Phil
Sponenberg, one of America's foremost preservationists of rare livestock
breeds:
http://www.mindspring.com/~skocher/Sponenberg.htm
To see some more on this topic from a native of Turkey, see
Ilker's pages here:
http://www.geocities.com/turkcobankopekleri/turkanadolucobanlari.htm
http://www.geocities.com/turkcobankopekleri/anatolianexist.htm
... and my ASDs page (you may have just come from there)
http://www.mindspring.com/~skocher/ASDs.htm
For some photos of Turkey's real pride and joy, their native Kangal
Dog breed, see the Kangal Festival photos here:
http://www.mindspring.com/~skocher/KangalFest00.htm
