Nation Rebranding in Turkey

In December 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a memorandum mandating the use of the endonymic version of the country’s name, Türkiye, over its exonymic counterpart, Turkey, for all official activities and correspondences, and languages. Framed as a strategic maneuver to “strengthen the Türkiye brand”, this toponymic reconfiguration is a multifaceted nation-rebranding strategy operating at the political, economic, and sociolinguistic levels (Selvi 2023). The present study adopts a micro-level focus on the role that populist sociolinguistic hypersensitivities have played in this change, including the deeply rooted etymological irritation stemming from the misinterpreted linkage between the turkey (the animal) and Turkey (the country) which have led to taunts and mockery; the pejorative semantic interpretations equating the name with “something that fails badly” or “a stupid person”); and the connotational nuances arising from turkey-related puns. It critically highlights inconsistencies, operational challenges, and ineffective nation-rebranding attempts. Furthermore, it underscores the central role of the English language as both the primary target and the catalyst — prompting a domino effect across languages in the instructed toponymic reconfiguration. Ultimately, this study contributes to understanding (re)naming practices as multi-layered manifestations of symbolic power, linguistic evolution, and complex identity negotiations across political, economic, and sociolinguistic domains.