In England, this cat was also very popular.
In the nineteenth century, associated with the British, he gives birth to Persian, to which he transmits the gene responsible for the long hair.
Unfortunately, he is the victim of the great success of the latter.
It failed to disappear, and was even extinct after the Second World War.
The Turks, anxious to see the race disappear, decided to protect it and specimens were welcomed at the Ankara Zoo.
It was then that breeders in Europe and the United States decided to import Turkish angoras from Turkey, where the breed is currently protected.
Among these imported cats, and ancestors of our Turkish Angoras, are Yildiz and Yildizcik cats from the Ankara Zoo.
In the 1970s, this breed experienced a real boom.
Concretizing this, the Cat Fancier Association (CFA) registered the first subjects in 1970, and recognized the breed in 1973, which the International Feline Federation (FIFé) did in 1988.
However, this breed remains relatively rare and little known nowadays and is strongly competed by more recent breeds of long-haired and long-haired cats of which it is nevertheless at the origin: Norwegian, Siberian, Maine Coon, Persian ...
It is still protected at the Ankara Zoo where you can still see specimens and are still exported to enrich the breeding of the whole world of new blood.
It should be noted that the Turkish angora is a breed that has not been created by man even if he has intervened to improve its characteristics: it is a natural breed.