Turkish Zoo and aquarium association being planned

Türkiye hayvanat bahçeleri ve akvaryum birliği kuruluş toplantısı - Eskişehir Haberleri

Brief translation:

A meeting has been done in Eskişehir for the establishment of the Turkish association of zoos and aquariums.

According to the Eskişehir municipality, along with collections with A and B level licenses, Sander Cozijn, the middle east representative of species 360 also joined the meeting.

Koen Brouwer, the consultant of the Eskişehir zoo said in his speech that zoos should be self sustaining by produsing their own electricity, recycling water, and being facilities that unite man with animals.

Cozijn gave information about ZIMS which is a prerequisite in order to be a member of the EAZA.

 

Another meeting has occurred in Antalya. The participants are the representatives of the three EAZA zoos (Faruk Yalçın, Bursa and Izmir), the Eskişehir Zoo, and the Gaziantep Zoo. Other than exchange of information amongst the zoos, there hasn’t been any big plan or conclusion.


Article in Turkish
Türkiye'de bir ilk

 

I know you've said most Turkish zoos are bad, so what are your thoughts on this?

 

Well considering Turkey’s current economic state and the fact that it has been five years since a similar* meeting with seemingly no progress, I wouldn’t really expect much from these meetings. The zoos in this meeting aren’t as odious as Karatay or the now defunct Ataturk Forest Farm Zoo (and I say this despite Gaziantep’s flaws which I have mentioned on my unfinished thread my ranking of zoo visits) but none of them will be worthy of recognition anytime soon and I wouldn’t suggest anyone to get out of their way to visit these places (especially Gaziantep) unless they just want to add more zoos to their life lists. The fact that Turkish zoos hadn’t had such meetings until 2018 shows that saying “Turkey missed the bus” with regards to zoos is a huge understatement.


*= The article for the second meeting says that the meeting is the first one of its kind, so either the meeting from 2018 is completely unrelated to this meeting or the journalists behind this are not aware of the 2018 meeting. This is why I say similar instead of “first”