In Germany, certain forms of violence against animals—especially those tied to cultural or religious practices—are systematically ignored in mainstream animal advocacy. Figures like German-Turkish author Hilal Sezgin are celebrated as moral authorities, yet the structural harm behind ritual killings is rarely addressed. Critique is welcome only where it comes at no cost; where it matters, silence prevails. Animal ethics that stop at cultural sensitivity risk becoming reputation management rather than true liberation.
The Silence of Representation
Hilal Sezgin functions less as a critical intellectual and more as a figure exploitable by the culture industry, around whom a closed loop of approval has formed.
There are figures defined less by what they say than by what they are not allowed to say. Hilal Sezgin belongs to this category. In the media, she is presented as a German-Turkish standard-bearer: liberal, reasonable, morally approachable. A voice meant to bridge differences—between Germany and Turkey, between progress and heritage, between critique and cultural sensitivity.
Yet it is precisely this role that creates gaps.
While mass killings of dogs are currently taking place in Turkey, and scandals in zoos reveal systemic violence against nonhuman animals, the German-Turkish discourse remains conspicuously silent. No public objection, no clear positioning, no visible solidarity with the victims of this violence. The silence is not accidental. It is functional.
Representation is not a neutral role. Whoever is positioned as a morally reliable voice must remain palatable. Critique cannot strike where it would seriously disrupt national narratives, state violence, or cultural self-images. This produces selective morality: loud when confirmed by German mainstream media, mute when real responsibility for concrete acts of violence is demanded.
This form of silence is not an individual failing. It is a structural outcome of liberal discourse economies. The price of visibility is predictability. The price of moral authority is observing invisible boundaries. Animals—especially where their suffering becomes politically or culturally “sensitive”—regularly fall through this grid.
From an antispeciesist perspective, this is particularly problematic. Animal ethics that defer to cultural loyalties lose their claim to universality. Those who critique violence against animals only where it incurs no social cost are not practicing ethics; they are managing reputation.
This is explicitly not about origin, identity, or cultural attribution. The critique is not aimed at “Turkey,” not at being “Turkish,” not at biographical positioning. It is directed against the media-functionalization of morality—against the way certain voices serve as an alibi for progressiveness while real violence remains invisible.
The liberal mainstream loves such figures. They allow critique without consequence, outrage without risk, humanism without disruption. Animals, especially where their suffering is politically inconvenient, are left out.
And yet the credibility of any ethical stance is determined precisely here—not where agreement is guaranteed, but where critique comes at a cost. Silence may be strategically understandable. Morally neutral, it is not.
Those who present themselves as voices of reason must be judged by whether that reason speaks where it is no longer decorative.
On the Selective Blindness of Animal Rights Discourses
There is much to say about this. One example:
In Turkey, animal rights activists openly protest certain forms of institutionalized killing and violence against animals. At the same time, in Germany—a country with a large Turkish-descended population—this very issue is systematically sidelined in mainstream animal advocacy. Even as it is emphasized that all killing of nonhuman animals is wrong, it suddenly becomes “unnecessary” or “problematic” to name or discuss certain forms of this violence specifically.
This stance is not neutral. It is perverse.
It shifts the problem: it is not the violence that is scrutinized, but the act of scrutinizing it itself. Critique is considered disruptive; differentiation, inappropriate. This becomes especially evident in the role of the German-Turkish author, philosopher, and vegan animal rights advocate Hilal Sezgin, who often serves as the spearhead of this position in the German discourse.
In several of her articles, she argues that it is unnecessary to differentiate between religious and non-religious forms of killing, and that the religiously “divinely” legitimized aspect of ritual slaughter need not be fundamentally questioned. Examples include:
- taz: “Kommentar Schächtungsverbot: Fleischverzicht ist konsequenter” – https://taz.de/Kommentar-Schaechtungsverbot/!5117541/
(Sezgin argues that a general abstention from meat is more consistent than a legal ban on specific slaughter methods.) - taz: “Halal-Fleisch darf kein Bio-Siegel tragen, weil Schächten zu qualvoll sei” – https://taz.de/Kommentar-Halal-darf-nicht-bio-sein/!5572606/
(Sezgin critiques the hypocrisy of labeling Halal meat as organic and relativizes the ethical problem of ritual slaughter.) - NDR Freitagsforum: “Halal oder haram – über betäubungsloses Schlachten” – https://www.ndr.de/kultur/sendungen/freitagsforum/Halal-oder-haram,freitagsforum312.html
(Sezgin discusses that animals are slaughtered without stunning; to outsiders, this appears barbaric, while she emphasizes the cultural and religious context.)
Remarkably, this position receives little opposition in the German-speaking animal rights and liberation scene. Instead, there is a striking loyalty—especially to a Turkish-descended community, politically and culturally partly aligned with Erdoğan-friendly narratives. This assessment comes from discussions with Turkish animal rights activists working in Turkey, who report the discrepancy clearly.
Thus, ritual killing itself becomes an ideological battlefield even within critical contexts. Critique from the outside is deemed culturally insensitive; critique from within, betrayal. In this configuration, distance is not only legitimate but necessary—given a religious tradition that not only permits killing but actively reproduces it as a morally embedded practice.
An animal rights movement that stops here betrays its own claim. Those who continue to reproduce human-centered logical and ethical fallacies—whether out of consideration, loyalty, or fear of conflict—do not pursue liberation; they simulate it.
Animal ethics that remain silent where violence is culturally or religiously sanctioned is not ethics. It is an arrangement.