Turkey's now Turkiye: A bird's name, 'bad' connotations among reasons for rebranding

Turkey will now be known as Turkiye in the United Nations. This follows the Turkey’s government letter to the UN, formally requesting that it be referred to as Turkiye, the state-run Anadolu news agency has reported.

The news agency, quoting Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson to UN secretary general António Guterres, said the name change became effective “from the moment” the letter was received.

The process of rebranding the country’s name started last year. In December 2021, the country’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement saying the “word Turkiye represents and expresses the culture, civilisation, and values of the Turkish nation in the best way.”

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Erdogan ordered the use of Turkiye to better represent Turkish culture and values; he also said that ‘Made in Turkiye’ be used instead of ‘Made in Turkey’ on exported products. Following the order Turkish ministries also began using Turkiye in official documents.

Why Turkiye?

State broadcaster TRT had published a report last year explaining some reasons why. It said Turkiye was adopted following the country’s independence in 1923. “Over the centuries, Europeans have referred to firstly the Ottoman state and then to Turkiye by many names. But the name that has stuck most is the Latin “Turquia” and the more ubiquitous “Turkey,” the report said.

TRT World explained the decision in an article earlier this year, saying Googling “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.”

Interestingly, the bird turkey got its name as guinea fowl — originally imported to Europe through Turkey — were called turkey-hens. The name was later also given to the much larger bird from the Americas.

The government has also had objections to Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of the term “turkey”; “something that fails badly” or “a stupid or silly person”.

TRT World argued that Turks prefer their country to be called Turkiye, in “keeping with the country’s aims of determining how others should identify it”.

Campaign to promote Turkiye

The Turkish presidency’s directorate of communications said it launched the campaign “to promote more effectively the use of ‘Turkiye’ as the country’s national and international name on international platforms”.

In January this year, there were media reports that the government had also launched a tourism campaign using “Hello Turkiye” as the tag line.

Precedents of name change

There are other countries that have changed their names as is the case with Turkey.

While Holland finally changed its name to The Netherlands in 2020 to overcome its association with recreational drug use and legal prostitution, the Republic of Macedonia officially became the Republic of North Macedonia in 2019 due to political disputes with Greece.
In 1935, Iran changed its name from Persia as the region in Persian language was called Iran.

Other examples include, Siam changing its name to Thailand, and Rhodesia changing to Zimbabwe to drop its colonial legacy — the same reason for which Ceylon changed to Sri Lanka in the 1970s.