At the United Nations, Turkey is now officially called in all languages by its Turkish name “Türkiye” and no longer “Turkey” too connoted in English, a will of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced the UN Thursday, June 2.
“The change is immediate,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, told AFP. The diplomat specified that it was an official letter from Ankara, received at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Wednesday June 1, which immediately formalized Turkey’s name change.
On Tuesday, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Cavusoglu, posted on his Twitter account, signing this letter addressed to the UN Secretary General and demanding that “the name of our country at the UN, in foreign languages, be registered as ‘Türkiye'”.
Ankara thus asks to no longer be called “Turkey” in English, which also means “turkey”, and which could therefore have a negative connotation.
The head of Turkish diplomacy referred in his tweet to President Erdogan’s desire, since the end of 2021, to “increase the brand value of our country”. In fact, in economic matters, Ankara has wanted for several years to impose the “made in Türkiye” brand internationally at the expense of “made in Turkey”.