The Guardian reports, “Türkiye, not Turkey: US diplomats agree to spelling change”:
The US state department has said it will largely stop writing the word Turkey and instead call the country Türkiye, agreeing to a request by the Turkish government, which resents the inadvertent association with poultry.
In a statement announcing measures to disrupt financiers of the Islamic State group, the state department wrote of joint action between “the United States and Türkiye”, written with an umlaut over the u.
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Turks have long been upset by cartoons and other references that associate their country’s name in English with the bird – believed to be so named because the British thought the species, indigenous to North America, came from the east.
In a recent article, Turkish public broadcaster TRT World noted that a “turkey” can also be slang for a “stupid or silly person”.
Perhaps the real turkeys are at the U.S. State Department.
Some countries have names which have been frequently prefixed in English with “The”, such as “The Netherlands”, “The Bahamas”, “The Ukraine”, “The Argentine”, and “The Gambia”. I think I’m going to start calling Erdoğan’s paradise “The Turkey”.