KEBABBLE Special days for urban cowboys
By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - Modern cowboys wear orange jackets, carry dart guns and ride
motorbikes ... well at least in Turkey they do.
Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice that commemorates Abraham's willingness
to give up his son Isaac, is commemorated all over Turkey with the slaughter of
sheep, goats and bulls. Inhabitants of towns and cities as well as the
countryside buy their animals in the weeks before and, when the fateful morning
comes, sharpen their knives and lead the sacrifices out to the place of
slaughter. Inevitably accidents occur, and when they
happen on urban streets, the cowboys are called in.
The cowboys are actually public servants, council workers and police, some of
whom have had special training for the job. Lassoing and darting runaway
animals, especially enraged and frightened bulls, is no mean feat. These heavy
muscular animals appear to go to the pot in the most recalcitrant manner and
every year the papers report both escapees and injuries.
The new trend is to establish special teams of men and a telephone hotline
("Alo Boga Kacti" - "Hello My Bull Escaped") to manage the problem. The teams
were well advertised in advance via the press and television and on December 8
their training paid off.
The Erzincan team is set up every year and among the most professional; they
take their work very seriously. This year they took over the local football
team's training grounds two weeks before Eid started to begin their
preparations.
The head of the council, Mehmet Buyruk, said it was essential to have a team so
that animals could be recaptured in as short a time as possible and with
minimum distress being caused to the bull.
Under the watchful eye of their chief, Ertugrul Telli, the five men worked on
their physical condition by sprinting and running hurdles, while also receiving
instruction from veterinarians on bovine psychology. The chief instructed his
men on the art of the lariat and how best to use dart guns. Their exertions may
have seemed extreme considering the team would only be in operation for 24
hours, but when faced with a 500 kilogram snorting, pawing, charging cow it's
best to be prepared.
In Kocaeli the team last year consisted of four men, one of whom was a
veterinarian. This year there were nine men on motorbikes who, rather
appropriately if not ironically, trained at the local abattoir. The Gungoren
council in Istanbul also set up a team and trained it for weeks beforehand. The
six men on three motorbikes practiced firing air rifles and lassoing real cows
while mounted. Engin Civan, head of the Veterinary Association said, "We have
had problems in previous years with recapturing escaped animals so we tried to
learn our lesson from that." Samsun's team of council law enforcers carried out
similar duties for the fourth year running.
In the city of Sanliurfa, a moment of distraction allowed Ali Degen's bull his
chance to run and he took it. Local men cornered him in Sirrin Mahallesi and
called for the crack cattle team.
On arriving and looking at the enraged beast, they first created a barricade
with their vehicles and then enlisted the help of bystanders to create a row of
lariatists. This proved to be ineffective after the bull charged the line,
injuring some men and causing others to scramble for safety behind a nearby
wall. It then made off into the garden area of a nearby petrol station.
The experts stepped in and shot the beast with a sedative dart and after an
hour or so he quieted. However, when the team moved in to tie him with a rope
he broke free a second time and ran into the ground floor of an apartment block
where the special team was finally able to restrain him and hand him back to
his owner.
In another part of Sanliurfa, a bull that escaped into some waste grounds held
the team at bay for over two hours. Men that tried to grab the rope hanging
from his neck were dragged helplessly to and fro. Eventually, the bull was
brought under control, only for the special team to realize that during their
exertions someone had crashed into their pickup truck. Perhaps they could ask
Erzincan to lend them someone for training purposes?
Part of the problem is the insistence of families with village roots who have
long since become city dwellers to take matters into their own hands. Despite
councils across the country establishing designated areas for ritual slaughter
to take place, people still buy their animals weeks in advance and tie them up
in their gardens.
These inexperienced animal handlers not only often injure themselves while
trying to kill the animal but also often lose purchase on them as they try to
move them from place to place. With fines for slaughtering outside of council
compounds only standing at around 50 lira (US$32), the special sacrifice teams
look likely to become a modern institution.
While cows in general are placid ruminants, bulls are a much different story,
used all over Europe in spectacles of bravery and savagery. Perhaps these
beasts have some prescience of their deaths which spurs on their attempts at
freedom.
Certainly, they will resist the unknown and the loss of control that being led
around implies. These doughty cattle that give their owners the runaround are
obviously the more spirited of those destined to end up on dinner tables. If
they show sufficient courage, perhaps they should be spared like bulls of
exceptional valor in the Spanish bull fighting ring and used as training beasts
for the modern-day Turkish motorcycle matadors.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She
moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.
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