Turkey seeks a change

The Turkish élite have long felt uneasy about the connotations in English of the name Turkey. Its association with the large North American bird typically served for dinner at Thanksgiving has been a perpetual sore point.  Moreover, TRT World, Turkey’s English-language TV channel, recently pointed out that “turkey” in English is also slang for a theatrical flop and a stupid person.

The name is derived from the medieval Latin “Turchia,” and for hundreds of years the Ottoman empire was also commonly referred to in English as Turkey or the Turkish empire. The 1923 Treaty of Lucerne, which formalized the breakup of the old Ottoman empire, saw the birth of a new state which adopted the name “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti,” translated in English as the Republic of Turkey.

It was in December 2021 that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan released a memorandum asking the public to abandon the well-established name Turkey and substitute Türkiye (pronounced Tour-key-yeh).  “Türkiye is the best representation and expression of the Turkish people’s culture, civilization and values,” said Erdogan.  Shortly afterward, Turkey began a concerted move to change its internationally recognized official name. The change was promoted by political and official Turkish spokespeople as an effort to instill national pride and also to eliminate associations with the Thanksgiving bird and other pejorative uses of the word “turkey.”  “Made in Türkiye” now appears on the country’s exports, and Turkish Airlines has taken to greeting passengers in a cheery video with Hello, Türkiye.

English is, paradoxically, the world’s lingua franca, so this whole promotional effort is really directed against English usage. Negative associations of the word “turkey” with roast dinner do not affect other languages. In French, “Turquie” has no connection to “dinde”; German “Turkei” to “truthahn”; Italian “Turquia” to “tacchino”; or Hebrew “Turqui” to “hodoo.”  

It was on June 1, following a request from Ankara for the change, that the UN agreed to change the Republic of Turkey’s name at the organization to “Türkiye.” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the change had been made following a letter received from the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and the change became effective the moment the letter was received.

On January 6, the US State Department announced that the country had adopted the change of name.  The transition, made in advance of a forthcoming visit to the States by Cavusoglu was first noticed in a statement posted by the US State Department about joint US-Turkish action against suspected IS (Islamic State) financiers.

What's preventing the English-speaking world from changing Turkey's name?

However willing the English-speaking world might be to comply with Erdogan’s request (and there has not yet been a rush to do so), the umlaut over the “u” is a hurdle that English speakers will find difficult to surmount and will probably ignore.  And indeed, US officials later confirmed that their change would be confined to using Erdogan’s preferred spelling.  The pronunciation of the name would remain the same.  

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters: “The Turkish Embassy did request that we use this spelling in our communications. The Department will use the spelling that you saw today in most of our formal diplomatic and bilateral contexts, including in public communications.” 

In addition to the US and the UN, the name change has been adopted by NATO, Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand. The UK has given no indication that it intends to comply with Erdogan’s request, and UK government websites retain the traditional spelling. The UK may be reluctant to concede to Turkey on any issues at the moment, in view of Erdogan’s increasingly warm ties with Moscow, to say nothing of his uncompromising stance on the fraught NATO bids of Sweden and Finland.   

As the US and other Western countries imposed sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, Turkey – a member of NATO – more than doubled its trade with Russia in 2022 compared to the year before, creating a breathing space for Russia’s squeezed economy. 

As for Sweden’s application for membership of NATO, Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on January 21 that Turkey would not budge until all its concerns were addressed. Erdogan was already angry over protests held in Sweden that included hanging him in effigy and flying the flag of the PKK, the militant Kurdish group that Erdogan, with many countries backing him, has designated a terrorist organization.  Among Erdogan’s demands are that Sweden change its legal definition of terrorism.

It was in May 2022, following the new security realities brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that Sweden and Finland simultaneously submitted applications to join the NATO alliance. Turkey was already angry over the pro-PKK protests held in Sweden. But then, on January 21, in a protest held in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm, a Danish anti-Islam activist burned a copy of the Quran. Erdogan immediately told Sweden to forget about his support for their NATO bid. With Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential elections now scheduled for May 14, he is seizing every opportunity to rally support for his AKP party and for himself. This issue is a godsend.

As regards its change of name, Turkey has a track record. It was in 1930 that the Turkish postal service decided to change the age-old name of the country’s ancient city, Constantinople, once the capital of the Ottoman empire, to Istanbul. People with long memories might recall the 1953 novelty song “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” – and those who do not, can find it on YouTube.

As the lyrics go:

Why did Constantinople get the works?

That’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.■

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com