Türkiye rebrand gains global recognition as UN adopts new name

The United Nations updated its records to Türkiye after receiving Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s letter, giving Ankara a visible victory in a years-long effort to replace the English name Turkey with the country’s preferred form. The change moved quickly through UN systems and signaled how far a state can push its own naming preferences onto the international stage.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan set the campaign in motion with a memorandum in December 2021 directing the use of Türkiye instead of Turkey in official activities and correspondence. Turkey’s Directorate of Communications followed on 13 January 2022 with the “Hello Türkiye” campaign, aimed at promoting the new name on international platforms and strengthening the country’s brand abroad. Ankara said the goal was to standardize the country’s name across languages and align global usage more closely with its own identity.

The diplomatic effort culminated on 26 May 2022, when Türkiye formally asked the United Nations to use the new name. The UN said it received Çavuşoğlu’s letter on 1 June 2022 and changed the country name immediately, with UNTERM records showing the update took effect with immediate effect after the 31 May 2022 communication. The organization publicly announced the move on 2 June 2022, and its country-name records were updated the same day. The United Nations in Türkiye later said the country’s name had been officially changed at the UN following the formal letter from the Republic of Türkiye.

The shift carried symbolic weight because the state had already long used Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, or the Republic of Turkey, since its founding in 1923, while English-language usage stayed with Turkey. That gap made the dispute more than a spelling matter: it was a contest over whether foreign audiences would accept a name chosen by the state itself, rather than one inherited from English convention and global familiarity.

The campaign also reached NATO, which was formally notified in 2022. In Washington, the change was only partial. On 5 January 2023, the U.S. State Department said it had begun using Türkiye in formal diplomatic and bilateral contexts after the U.S. Board on Geographic Names approved the change. But the board kept both Turkey and Republic of Turkey as conventional names because they are more widely understood by the American public, leaving the older spelling intact in some U.S. government usage.