Bodrum Municipality support the campaign by canceling the license of the Dolphin park, the application to the Muğla Administrative Court stopped the execution of the municipality decision. The final decision on the legal status and future of the facility become clear in the coming months.
Bodrum Mayor Ahmet Aras announced that Dolphin park license canceled. The place will continue to operate as restaurant (lokanta).
Author Buket Uzuner and the Dolphin Freedom Platform launched a campaign in the internet to close the Dolphin park in the Güverçinlik to protect the dolphins. Dolphin Freedom Platform Öykü Yağcı, Author Buket Uzuner, members of Bodrum City Council and a group of citizens including children visited Bodrum Mayor Ahmet Aras to deliver the collected signatures today.
LICENSE CANCELED
Aras in his speech gave the information that the license of Bodrum Dolphin Park canceled. Respondents who welcomed the decision, cheered for a long time. Bodrum Mayor Ahmet Aras said:
“We support all your initiatives. I support it and also want to give the following news. I already canceled the Dolphin Show Center license before you came. Even before the signature collection has already on the agenda. We also examined our lawyers. Actually, our lawyers decided that the secondary activity subject, Dolphin park could not be legally placed by the municipality next to the drinking restaurant activity. So I got the cancellation of the license. Because it is not our job to give the Dolphin Show Center license. It’s not the municipality’s job. Because the municipality can not license any activity that it can not control. That’s why we picked him up. Now it will only continue as a drinking restaurant. ”
After the visit was a press release at the Municipal Square. Arif Yılmaz, Bodrum City Council President who made the first speech, said, that as the City Council, we want to say that tourism can be organized in more regular, sustainable and quality way. We do not necessarily have to deal with such events brought by mass tourism. A tourism with captive animals does not take Bodrum tourism one step further. We will support forever to achieve the goal of achieving a sustainable Bodrum tourism without consuming nature, respecting living things and protecting life while developing. ”
HUMAN IS NOT THE LORD OF ANY LIFE
Author Buket Uzuner, who started the campaign, said, “Dolphins not a fish. We’re confusing them. They lived on Earth before us. We, the so-called sapiens, came much later. So we who we are, catching them, imprisoning them, capturing them and putting them into show centers with money. All living things are part of nature with human beings, equal to human beings. Man is not the lord of anyone. Our struggle will continue until we tell it”.