Turkish Van

The Turkish Van is a semi-long-haired, standardised breed of domestic cat, which was developed during the 1950s in the United Kingdom from a selection of cats obtained from various cities of modern-day Turkey, especially southeast Turkey. This rare cat breed is one of the larger ones, and is distinguished by the Van pattern, where the colour is restricted to the head and the tail, and the rest of the cat is white; this is due to the expression of the white spotting gene, a type of partial leucism. A Turkish Van may have blue or orange eyes, or be odd-eyed.