Jan. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. State Department has begun spelling Turkey as Türkiye upon the request of Turkish officials.
Ned Price, the spokesman for the State Department, said during a press briefing Thursday that the change was put into practice earlier that morning after a request was made by the Turkish Embassy.
The change was approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names but retained “Turkey” and the “Republic of Turkey” as conventional names because they are more widely understood by the American public.
“The department will use the spelling that you saw today in most of our formal diplomatic and bilateral contexts, including in public communications, but the conventional name can also be used if it is in furtherance of broader public understanding,” Price said.
That change has already been reflected on parts of the State Department’s website as of Sunday, and Price described the change as a process that will occur over time
.”There’s not a Control-F function for the entire Department of State. But we are -we will work on that going forward,” Price said when pressed on whether documents would be changed dating back to the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pushed for the change from the anglicized spelling, which has been largely used by the rest of the world since Türkiye was established upon the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
