Turkish Airlines will soon be known by a different name.
Turkey has changed its name (the country, not the bird)
For those who haven’t heard, the country of Turkey is officially changing its name to Türkiye. This is a process that started in late 2021, but the change has now even been recognized by the United Nations. What’s the logic for this name change?
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that Türkiye “represents and expresses the culture, civilization, and values of the Turkish nation in the best way.” Domestically the country has been referred to by this name for a long time, but abroad the country has of course been known as Turkey.
It’s reported that another consideration was allegedly because the government wants to dissociate the country’s name from the bird (a turkey). It’s stated that the country is tired of competing with the bird in online search results. Another reason is that the word “turkey” has alternate definitions that include a “silly person” or “something that fails badly.”
I’m not really sure what to make of all of this. On the one hand, I can appreciate that countries can choose their own names, and that’s fair enough. It’s none of my business, really. At the same time, I doubt many people went to Google with the intent of planning a trip to Turkey, but ended up at the supermarket buying dinner instead. Furthermore, I feel like on some level the country’s old name made it easy for people to remember and spell, which seems like a good thing (for example, good luck getting the average person to spell Kyrgyzstan correctly).
Turkish Airlines is also rebranding
What happens to Turkish Airlines, the national airline of Türkiye? Well, that’s being rebranded as well. It has been revealed that Turkish Airlines will be rebranded as Türkiye Hava Yolları. So you can expect that future planes of the airlines will have that written on the side of the aircraft, rather than Turkish Airlines.
If you’re going to rename the country I suppose it also makes sense to rebrand the airline, but this all seems like a big investment to avoid confusion with a bird.
Bottom line
Turkey has been renamed Türkiye, and Turkish Airlines has been rebranded as Türkiye Hava Yolları. That’s sure going to take some getting used to, and will probably realistically just require me to copy and paste the carrier’s name in posts going forward, given the modified letters. Or in reality most of us will probably just refer to the airline as THY.
What do you make of Turkish Airlines being rebranded?
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