Why the country asked the world to use its own name, what the UN and others decided, how to pronounce and type it, and which form to use in your own writing.
Last reviewed on 27 September 2026.
If you have noticed the country's name written as "Türkiye" on news tickers, airline websites and United Nations documents, and as "Turkey" almost everywhere else, you are not imagining an inconsistency. In 2021 and 2022 the Turkish government set out to make Türkiye — the name the country has always used for itself — the standard form in every language, including English. Some international bodies adopted it quickly; much of the English-speaking world has kept using "Turkey". This page explains what changed, why, how to say and type the name, where it comes from, and how to choose between the two when you are writing.
Strictly speaking, nothing changed in Turkish. The country has called itself Türkiye since the Republic was founded in 1923, and its full official name is Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, the Republic of Türkiye. What changed was the government's policy on how the name should appear in other languages.
In December 2021 a presidential circular instructed state institutions to use "Türkiye" in place of "Turkey", "Turquie", "Türkei" and other foreign forms in their communications, and encouraged the "Made in Türkiye" label on exports. At around the same time the country's tourism promotion agency launched a campaign under the slogan "Hello Türkiye", and state broadcasters and ministries switched their English-language output. The government's stated aim was to present a single, consistent national brand that reflects the country's own name, culture and values.
The next step was to formalise the change internationally. In 2022 the Turkish foreign ministry wrote to the United Nations asking it to use "Türkiye", and in June 2022 the UN confirmed that it had registered the change. Since then the country appears as Türkiye in UN documents and in the organisation's list of member states.
After the UN decision, the new form spread through international and diplomatic usage. Other intergovernmental organisations — including NATO and a number of other bodies where Türkiye is a member — began to use it in official documents, and many foreign governments did the same in their diplomatic communications. The United States government moved to "Türkiye" for most official purposes in early 2023, after a period of using both. International sporting bodies, airlines and multinational companies with business in the country have also increasingly switched, though practice is not uniform.
Adoption has been much patchier in journalism, publishing and everyday speech. Several major English-language news organisations decided to keep "Turkey" in running text, typically on the grounds that it is the established English name and the one their readers recognise, while others adopted "Türkiye" or use it alongside "Turkey" on first mention. Style guides therefore disagree, and it is quite normal to see both forms in the same newspaper on the same day — one in a quoted statement from Ankara, the other in the reporter's own copy.
The Turkish state and its agencies, the UN system, many intergovernmental bodies and diplomatic documents, and a growing number of companies.
Many English-language newspapers and broadcasters, publishers, dictionaries, travel guides and ordinary speakers.
Some governments and news outlets, which use "Türkiye" in official contexts or on first mention and "Turkey" elsewhere.
The official explanation was about identity and branding: "Türkiye" is the country's own name, and using it everywhere presents one clear image to the world rather than a set of foreign adaptations. That is not unusual — other countries have asked the world to adopt their own names or spellings, and many have succeeded over time.
There is also a well-known linguistic irritation. In English, "turkey" is the name of a large bird, and in informal American English it is slang for a failure or a flop. Neither association has anything to do with the country, but the coincidence has long been the source of jokes, and commentators widely assumed it was part of the motivation. The government itself has emphasised the positive argument — the country's name in its own language — rather than the bird.
The bird's name does, in fact, come from the country, by an indirect route. Europeans in the 16th century applied "turkey" first to the guinea fowl, which reached them through Ottoman-controlled trade routes, and then transferred the name to the unrelated American bird when it arrived. In Turkish, by contrast, the bird is called hindi, meaning "Indian" — a similar geographical confusion running the other way.
"Türkiye" has three syllables and is pronounced roughly Tür-kee-yeh. The first vowel, ü, does not exist in standard English: it is the same sound as the German ü or the French u in tu. To make it, say "ee" and round your lips as if to say "oo". The final -ye is a short, light "yeh". In Turkish the stress falls on the first syllable, although it is light. An English speaker who says "TOOR-kee-yeh" will be understood without difficulty.
Typing the ü is easy once you know how:
ü.Writing "Turkiye" without the dots is a common fallback where the character is unavailable, but it is technically a misspelling, because u and ü are separate letters in the Turkish alphabet. The Turkish language page explains the alphabet in more detail.
The word Türk is very old. It appears as the name of a people and state in the Orkhon inscriptions of the 8th century, stone monuments in present-day Mongolia that are among the earliest surviving texts in a Turkic language, and it is recorded even earlier in Chinese sources as the name of the Göktürk khaganate of the 6th century. Its original meaning is uncertain. Suggestions include "strong" or "powerful", but scholars do not agree, and it is best treated as a name whose deeper origin is unknown.
The -iye ending comes, through Ottoman Turkish, from an Arabic suffix used to form nouns of place and belonging. Türkiye can be understood as "the land of the Turks" or "the Turkish land". The form was used informally in the Ottoman period, alongside official names for the state that referred to the dynasty rather than the nation, and it became the formal name of the country with the founding of the Republic in 1923.
Western Europe had its own name for the region long before the Republic existed. From the 12th century onwards, as Seljuk Turks settled in Anatolia, medieval Latin writers began to call it Turchia — "Turk-land". That word lies behind the Italian Turchia, the French Turquie, and eventually the English "Turkey", which was in use by the late Middle Ages. So both names are built on the same root and mean essentially the same thing; the difference is simply that one was formed in Turkish and the other in Latin.
Both names are correct and both are universally understood, so the choice is one of context and house style rather than right and wrong. Some practical rules of thumb:
The country's name in Turkish has been Türkiye since the Republic was founded in 1923. In 2021–22 the government asked that the same form be used in foreign languages too, and in June 2022 the United Nations registered "Türkiye" as the country's name in its documents.
Roughly "Tür-kee-yeh", in three syllables. The ü is the same sound as German ü or French u: say "ee" while rounding your lips. An English approximation such as "TOOR-kee-yeh" is easily understood.
No. "Turkey" is still the established English name and is used by many newspapers, publishers and ordinary speakers. The UN and many official bodies now use "Türkiye", so it is the better choice in official or diplomatic contexts, but both are correct and understood.
The official reason was to present one consistent national brand based on the country's own name. Commentators also noted that in English "turkey" is the name of a bird and slang for a failure, though the government emphasised the positive case for using the native name.
It combines Türk, a very old ethnic name first recorded in the 6th to 8th centuries whose original meaning is uncertain, with -iye, a suffix of Arabic origin forming place names. Together it means roughly "land of the Turks", the same meaning as the medieval Latin Turchia from which "Turkey" derives.
No. The language is still Turkish, things from the country are Turkish and its people are Turks or Turkish citizens. The name change applies only to the name of the country itself.