The article I wrote about “The Real Turkish Angora” has been published and expanded upon in a Turkish cat magazine. Naturally, it is in the Turkish language. Here is part of the email from The Angora Cat association informing me of this welcome development:
Do you remember you wrote a short article about ”The Real Turkish Angora”? The Angora Cat association has decided to publish it in one Turkish Cat’s magazine. We wrote a short explanation too. We would like to share a copy of the article which is in Turkish only, however the translation would be pretty much the same as it is in your website and some comments below.
We hope we can make some difference for Turkish cats as well for other moggies in the world. We plan many projects and support is very needed by people who share similar ideas and want to contribute and help for our research.
We are very grateful for your support.
Warm Regards,
P. Aksoy, The Angora Cat Association, Turkey
Here are thumbnails of scans of the four page magazine article. If you click on the image you are taken to a new page showing the full sized version.
Of course, I am honored and pleased. I am more pleased than honored because the article I wrote is important for me in recognizing that the Turkish Angora in Turkey is the true cat. All the selective cat breeding in the world by the cat fancy in America or elsewhere cannot improve on the original cat.
The story about the real Turkish Angora applies to all cat breeds. The current versions are sometimes – not always, please note – too far removed from the original cats when the cat breed is a development of a naturally occurring cat. I prefer the original cats because they are more natural and being more natural they are as God intended them to be and not what we want them to be. Natural selection is a better process for deciding on the appearance of a cat than selective breeding by us. That is my honest viewpoint.
Although my opinion is shared by the Angora Cat Association I respect the views of members of the cat fancy. I am simply convinced that breeders would do better, and be better appreciated, if they reverted a bit towards the original cats. Selective breeding (to excess sometimes) is the desire of cat breeders but is neither appreciated by most people nor the cat.
Let’s celebrate the real Turkish Angora and all real cats of whatever cat breed.
PS. One of the pictures on Turkish Angoras Facts for Kids is my cat Minos from the Ankara Zoo. She is still going strong.
Hi Michael & Ankara Kedisi Dernegi,.
My following contribution was posted on Turkish Angoras for kids and I think it it too complex for that section. So here it is again. It looks deeper into the mechanics of how this falsification came about. I believe the cat associations are as much to blame as dishonest breeders.
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This was somehow cropped from my previous message.-
Hi Michael & AKD. Thank you for these explanations which go a long way to clearing up and countering the deliberate misinformation put out by American cat societies and breeders. The Turkish Angora is even stated as a natural breed of cat still found it it’s native habitat but have been fooled by breeders who did not write the true ancestral information in the application for registration forms. Being a natural breed any out-crossing automatically disqualifies the affected cat from being recognised as a genuine TA. The enormous difference in type from the original should have alerted the cat associations that something dishonest was going on, but they obviously chose to ignore that and actually encouraged that situation by basing the breed standard on the new concoction. This of course discriminates against the true Turkish Angora at shows, etc. a shameful and unacceptable situation.
Hello, Michael!
Thank you a lot for this article.
If you don’t mind we want to add our thoughts regarding to previous comments.
First of all Ankara Zoo has no importance in Turkey, most of people in Turkey don’t even know about it. It’s a bit overrated, but still as we know it is a place where real but only white Angora cats are kept (despite that colored ones are found on the streets. Sadly they are not under protection). We have close connections to Ankara Zoo, if someone wants to to know about the Ankara Zoo more, they can ask us. Besides the Ankara Zoo has little or no authority in matters of the Angora cats.
Additionally the picture in the first page of our article is not chosen by us, but the editor of the magazine. We were not happy to see it there. However if someone knows Turkish and reads the article (or reads English version in Micheal’s page) it becomes clear that the cat in the title page is not a real Angora 🙂
Thank you Michael for for taking the time to write this article about us and thanks for Harvey Harrison for his clarifications.
Warm Regards from Turkey
I have not been following Pictures of Cats very closely because I no longer get notification of new postings. .I would like to add that cat breeders, at least the one’s I have tussled with over the real Turkish Angora are no experts at all, do not understand science or respect it, and are unable to understand even a phylogentic tree. The matter is very simple. The genetic signature of Ankara Zoo and Turkish random cats differs very widely from the genetic signature of the samples send in by owners of TICA and CFA pedigree “Angoras”. Leslie Lyons made an enormous mistake in her 2012 Turkish Cat Genetics Study by assuming that the samples sent in by American “Angora” breeders represented the true legitimate and original Turkish Angora. All following raw genetic data was consequently ignored or manipulated to maintain this myth. The consequences were hilarious. Ankara Zoo and Turkish mainland cats were classified as Cyprus group cats solely because they have the same marker. This means that Cyprus cats are Ankara kedileri, not that Ankara cats are Cypriot! The phylogenetic tree shows that the Egyptian Mau and Tunisian random-bred cats make up the genome of the cat fancy Angoras, but these cats also have many other breeds in their ancestry but this is hushed up by allocating them a single colour reference on her charts. This fake Turkish Angora potpourri reference shows up all over the place and probably just means a mind-boggling mix of breeds and non-breeds and is meaningless except to show they are unrelated to Ankara cats. In the raw data there are “Turkish” samples which show this jumble of markers but we are unable to trace any of the reported donors and in one case the claimed veterinary Clinic that supposedly gave samples does not exist. These suspicious samples were used to authenticate the legitimacy of the American cat fancy Angoras. Samples from reputable Turkish cat breeders which showed the “Cyprus/Ankara kedisi marker were ignored. This is clear manipulation of data to authenticate a desired pre-conceived conclusion. As a result the Ankara kedisi (national symbol of Turkey) in the guise of the “new” Cyprus Aphrodite breed has been declared the national cat of Greek Cyprus. Forgive me for laughing. When the Greeks finally realise this they will be livid.
Thanks Harvey for that horrific but not unexpected insight. I hope the people in Ankara Zoo read your comment and comment themselves. I don’t know exactly what goes on in the cat fancy but I can get a clear sense of it from what I see and read. My assessment, regrettably, is not good.
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Thanks very much Michael. At the risk of upsetting you I must comment that the picture of a cat shown with the header of “The Real Turkish Angora” is typical of the usurper and not in the least bit like the original Turkish Angora as found in the Ankara Zoo and all over Turkey. Only young Angoras have biggish upright ears and even then are not close-set.
Congrats Michael. You couldn’t get a better response than that and from the right people in the right place too. The cat fancy seems a bit off, doesn’t it. I guess you have to be in it to really understand why it goes where it goes but outside perspective is valuable to any area of expertise. Expertise by definition is academically isolated from the rest of the world and in many professions if becomes distorted by and according to its own ideation. This to me is one of the greatest failings in the structure of modernity, and the reason why our culture is able to continue being so destructive. The outsiders opinion should be considered as gold to the insider. Then things would be kept in check and remain more sustainable. I have always felt this way from since I was very young. Reality needs to be shared by all – you can’t isolate yourself and create things that other people must experience in this life – you must ask them what they think. People inside professions – experts – become desensitized in their own subject matter. Better to be a master of all trades than a jack of one in my opinion.
I totally agree. As I say, I respect the views the people in the cat fancy but I do feel they have become too introspective as you suggest and breed for their own amusement and by their own standards while losing touch with the wider issues.
Congratulations Michael for your article “THE REAL TURKISH ANGORA” being used as a reference and published in a Turkish magazine for the benefit of the local Turkish readers.This is a amazing power of the internet,exchange of knowledge and discussions without geographical boundaries, language or physical presence.”P.O.C” is now being used as a “Cats Encyclopedia” reference by other search groups and cat organizations.
Thanks Rudolph. I really like the people in Turkey who look after the Turkish Angora there in Ankara Zoo. This is the real cat world. Fancy cat breeding is for breeders.