Turkey has told the United Nations that, at the behest of its president, it wishes from now on to be called \u201cTurkiye\u201d in all languages, the UN announced Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe change is immediate,\u201d Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief\u2019s spokesperson, told AFP by email.<\/p>\n
He noted that Ankara\u2019s official letter requesting the change had been received at the UN\u2019s New York headquarters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The day before, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavasoglu had tweeted a photo of himself signing the letter, addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the letter I sent to the UN Secretary General today, we are registering our country\u2019s name in foreign languages at the UN as \u2018Turkiye,’\u201d he wrote, including an umlaut over the \u201cu\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that the change would bring to an end the process of \u201cincreasing the brand value of our country,\u201d an initiative started by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has led the country for almost two decades.<\/p>\n
Over the past few years, the country has sought to change the branding on its products from \u201cmade in Turkey\u201d to \u201cmade in Turkiye.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to making the UN\u2019s nomenclature match how the nation is spelled in Turkish, the update would also help distinguish the country from the bird of the same name in English.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe name change may seem silly to some but it puts Erdogan in the role of protector, of safeguarding international respect for the country,\u201d Georgetown University professor Mustafa Aksakal was quoted as saying in The New York Times.<\/p>\n
The newspaper also noted that the move comes ahead of next year\u2019s presidential election as well as the centenary of the nation\u2019s founding after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey has told the United Nations that, at the behest of its president, it wishes from now on to be called \u201cTurkiye\u201d in all languages, the UN announced Thursday. \u201cThe change is immediate,\u201d Stephane Dujarric, the UN chief\u2019s spokesperson, told AFP by email. He noted that Ankara\u2019s official letter requesting the change had been received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":193153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_bookmark_settings":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[38135,3122,39226,3098],"class_list":["post-193152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-change-of-name","tag-turkey","tag-turkiye","tag-un"],"yoast_head":"\n