Correspondent in Istanbul
It is now recorded: Turkey takes its Turkish name abroad, “Türkiye”.
Exit, the overly connoted “Turkey” in English, which can be translated as “turkey” or “good for nothing”.
The spelling change request, made in January by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was approved on June 2 at the UN.
This coquetry of language is the flagrant echo of the desire of the Turkish head of state to weigh on the international scene.
“
The question is not linguistic, but political.
For Turkey, it is a question of imposing its way of defining and naming itself
,” analyzes Bayram Balci, director of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (Ifea).
The interested party barely hides it.
This word “
represents and best expresses the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish nation
”, explained the Turkish president in a press release, to justify his wish to “
wear this name internationally
”.
An ambition relayed on Twitter by the head of Turkish diplomacy, Mevlüt Çavusoglu: when he…
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