How ‘dog mom’ vacuum cleaner ad sparked culture war in Turkey

A Mother’s Day advertisement featuring a “dog mom” might pass in most places as cozy lifestyle marketing — but not in Turkey.

A commercial released by household appliance maker Bosch Turkey earlier this month quickly spiraled into a controversy over family values, dogs and even antisemitism, becoming the latest flashpoint in Turkey's ongoing culture wars.

In the commercial, set inside an appliance store, two women strike up a conversation while examining vacuum cleaners.

“You’re a mother, right? I get it,” one says. “I have two myself,” she adds, before the exchange drifts into remarks about sleepless nights and the unpredictability of “kids.”

The twist arrives in the final moments, as one of the women returns home with the vacuum cleaner and calls out to her “son,” who turns out to be a playful black-and-white border collie. The advertisement closes with the slogan, “You are also a mother when you carry someone in your heart for a lifetime,” followed by a Mother’s Day greeting to “all mothers.”

Backlash

Almost immediately after it aired, the ad came into the crosshairs after Yeni Safak, a conservative newspaper aligned with the government, attacked the campaign.

“Bosch Turkey prepared an advertisement targeting the institution of the family and the very concept of motherhood and fatherhood through Mother’s Day,” an article read on Sunday.

Mahinur Ozdemir Goktas, Turkey’s Minister of Family and Social Services, joined the growing backlash the same day, announcing that the ministry would initiate legal action. 

“Every form of love is, of course, valuable. But we do not accept the stretching and trivialization of a deep and foundational value like motherhood for the sake of communication strategies,” she wrote on X.

As outrage continued to spread across social media, Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog, Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK), which is effectively under government control, stepped in later that evening, announcing that it had opened an investigation into the advertisement.

Earlier this week, the company pulled the advertisement from circulation without public explanation. Al-Monitor reached out to the company for comment.

Cultural fault lines

The unusually swift reaction from state institutions came against the backdrop of Turkey’s deepening culture wars, in which debates over family, gender roles and birth rates have increasingly become political flashpoints.

Turkey’s birth rate has steadily declined over the past decade, falling from 2.1 live births per woman in 2014 to 1.48 in 2024, according to government statistics. The decline alarmed the government, which last year declared 2025 the “Year of the Family.” As part of the initiative, which was later extended to the “Decade of the Family,” the government rolled out a series of incentives to encourage higher birth rates. The measures included extending paid parental leave, increasing child support payments and offering newly married couples subsidized loans and interest-free credit to help them start families.

The measures have been coupled with increasingly forceful rhetoric from government officials portraying motherhood and family life as women’s primary societal roles. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly urged women to have at least three children and previously described motherhood as central to women’s identity. “The family institution is under attack,” he said in April. “Under the mask of individual freedom, the modern world is trying to hack the family and sever our bonds.”

Government critics, however, say the rhetoric reducing women’s role to motherhood and the backlash against the Bosch ad reflect a broader effort to confine women to a narrow definition of family and motherhood, while treating alternative lifestyles and emotional bonds as threats to social order.

“What is really being debated here is freedom of expression, interference in lifestyles and who gets to define the concept of ‘family’ and how,” Sezgin Tanrikulu, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, wrote on X.

“To belittle or devalue the emotional bonds that people form with animals is not only an intervention in individual choices but also an attack on the feeling of compassion,” he added.

The ad also came amid a politically charged debate over stray dogs in Turkey, pitting animal welfare advocates and pet owners against conservatives pushing for tougher action. “Dogs are not ‘soulmates’ or ‘children’; they are ‘dogs,’ ‘mutts,’” Osman Mesten, a lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party, wrote on X on Tuesday.

The issue of stray dogs issue has become increasingly contentious in recent years, as Turkey’s stray dog population grew during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, raising public safety concerns and turning street animals into a polarizing political question. Twelve people have died in 2025, and more than 200 people, including 50 children, died between 2020 and 2024 in incidents involving stray dogs, either through attacks or traffic accidents, according to the Safe Streets and Defense of the Right to Life Association, which campaigns for the removal of all stray dogs from the streets.

According to animal welfare groups, the crisis stems from years of municipal failure to sterilize dogs and that removing them en masse from the streets would replace a public safety problem with large-scale animal suffering. In 2024, Turkey’s parliament passed a controversial law to regulate the country’s large stray population, alarming groups who warned that it could pave the way for mass culling.

While data on the stray dog population is not readily available, since the 2024 law, the visible presence of stray dogs has declined in parts of the country, as many animals have been gradually removed from the streets and taken to municipal shelters. But the issue remains volatile, particularly in Istanbul. Earlier this month, Istanbul Governor Davut Gul announced that all stray dogs would be collected from the province, reigniting the debate. 

Have 'we gone mad?'

The controversy widened beyond debates over motherhood and pet culture into accusations of antisemitism after the Yeni Safak article focused not only on the advertisement itself but also on the fact that it was produced by an agency co-founded by Turkish Jewish businessman Jeffi Medina.

Critics said the reference in the article appeared to single out a prominent business figure in a way that risked inviting antisemitic conspiracy theories, amid a broader climate in Turkey where anger over Israel’s war in Gaza has increasingly blurred into antisemitic rhetoric.

Mainstream journalist Cuneyt Ozdemir criticized the targeting of Medina, saying the Bosch advertisement was fair game for debate but that dragging Medina into the controversy was “a great injustice.” He said, “He is an exemplary Turkish citizen who has signed off on works that have gone down in Turkey’s advertising history, who loves his country, pays his taxes and is one of the most respected and leading figures in the advertising sector.”

Others highlighted the absurdity of a sentimental household appliance ad becoming a microcosm of Turkey’s culture wars, with the state defending motherhood, conservatives policing the family, animal lovers defending urban pet culture and a Jewish businessman drawn into a debate largely unrelated to him.

“We found ourselves in a rather strange atmosphere. … The family minister stepped in this as if there were no other important issues. RTUK issued a statement,” prominent journalist Ismail Saymaz said on pro-opposition Halk TV. “Friends, have you lost your mind? Have you gone mad?"