Hold the Turkey: Country Pushes Name Change

Can you teach an old bird new tricks? Maybe if you change its name. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has sent a letter to the United Nations formally requesting that Turkey be referred to as “Türkiye,” the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The move is seen as part of a push by Ankara to rebrand the country and dissociate its name from the bird, which has some negative connotations.The spokesman for the UN secretary-general confirmed receipt of the letter late on Wednesday. The agency quoted Dujarric as saying that the name change had become effective “from the moment” the letter was received.President Erdogan’s government has been pressing for the internationally recognized name Turkey to be changed to “Türkiye” (tur-key-YAY), as it is spelled and pronounced in Turkish. The country called itself “Türkiye” in 1923 after its declaration of independence. In Greece, the neighboring Mediterranean country with which relations are not always neighborly, Turkey has been been called “Turkia” — in Greek letters, anyway — for many years. Athens eyed the name change warily. Speaking at a youth conference for his New Democracy party on Friday, the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said, “I hope that along with their name, they will change their mentality.” Relations between Ankara and Athens have long been fraught and in recent weeks tensions have been brewing. Turkey has clocked numerous military overflights of Greek airspace, questioned Greece’s sovereign rights over some Aegean islands near the Turkish coast, and cut off regular bilateral talks with Greece. Washington and EU leaders have warned Ankara to avoid provoking Greece. On Friday, Greece’s defense minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, said that Mr. Erdogan “always provokes tension whenever he feels threatened or faces problems at home.”Ukraine, for its part, has a new beef with Turkey, or Türkiye, accusing it of buying grain it says was stolen by Russia during the course of the war. Reuters reported on Friday that Kyiv’s ambassador to Ankara, Vasyl Bodnar, has asked Turkish authorities and Interpol for information about the allegedly illegal shipments.In December, Mr. Erdogan ordered the use of “Türkiye” to better represent Turkish culture and values, including demanding that “Made in Türkiye” be used instead of “Made in Turkey” on exported products. Turkish ministries began using “Türkiye” in official documents.Earlier this year, the government also released a promotional video as part of its attempt to change its name in English. The video shows tourists from across the world saying “Hello Türkiye” at famous destinations.The Turkish presidency’s Directorate of Communications said it launched the campaign “to promote more effectively the use of ‘Türkiye’ as the country’s national and international name on international platforms.”It was not clear whether the name, with a letter that doesn’t exist in the English alphabet, will catch on widely abroad. In 2016, the Czech Republic officially registered its short-form name, Czechia, and while some international institutions use it, many still refer to the country by its longer name.Turkey’s English-language state broadcaster, TRT World, has switched to using “Türkiye,” though the word “Turkey” is slipped in by journalists still trying to get used to the change.TRT World explained the decision in an article earlier this year, saying Google searches of the word “Turkey” brings up a “a muddled set of images, articles, and dictionary definitions that conflate the country with Meleagris — otherwise known as the turkey, a large bird native to North America — which is famous for being served on Christmas menus or Thanksgiving dinners.”The network continued: “Flip through the Cambridge Dictionary and “turkey” is defined as “something that fails badly” or “a stupid or silly person.” TRT World argued that Turks prefer their country to be called “Türkiye,” in “keeping with the country’s aims of determining how others should identify it.”

Hold the Turkey: Country Pushes Name Change

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