The United Nations has started using the new official name of Turkey - Türkiye
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a campaign to rename the country on the international stage at the end of last year. "The word Türkiye best reflects the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish people," Erdogan said in December.
This week, the UN received an official application from Turkey – and immediately approved it. After the central UN apparatus, most international organizations will also change the country's name in documents.
The Turkish government noted that the word Türkiye best represents and expresses the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish nation. "In this context, we use Made in Türkiye instead of Made in Turkey in our export products. Our products, which are the pride of the country in international trade, will be presented to the world with the word Türkiye," Ankara said.
The renaming of the country is also aimed at increasing the country's attractiveness for tourists. Turkey's tourism logo featuring a tulip and the beautiful inscription Türkiye is known worldwide.
Turkish state broadcaster TRT replaced Turkey with Türkiye in its English-language broadcasts last year – immediately after the campaign began. As one of the arguments for the renaming, TRT cited the fact that in English, "turkey" is also a bird traditionally prepared for Christmas, New Year, or Thanksgiving in the US.
Moreover, according to the Cambridge English Dictionary, one of the figurative meanings of the word "turkey" is a fool, a simpleton, and a loser. So the reform will avoid unwanted associations of the country with the bird and other meanings of the word turkey.
As BBC notes in its publication, countries often change names at the international level, and Turkey is not unique here. The Netherlands, for example, recently asked the world community to no longer use – at least in official texts – the traditional "Holland." Neighboring Iran did roughly the same thing in 1935 as the Turks – it introduced the word that Persians have always called their country as the official international name of the state.
Other neighbors of Turkey could theoretically also want to rename themselves on the international stage. Especially Georgia, whose English name Georgia coincides with the name of the American state, causing inconvenience, for example, when searching online. Georgians call their country Sakartvelo, Armenians – Hayastan, Syrians – Suriya, not Syria, and Greece calls itself Hellas.
However, while a country has every right to change its official name in the UN, it has no power over the languages of other peoples. So it is unlikely that we will use "Türkiye" instead of the traditional name "Turkey."