Turkey has told the United Nations that, on his orders of the President, he wanted to start now called Turkiye” in all languages, the United Nations was announced Thursday.
The change is direct,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the United Nations Head, told AFP via email.

He noted that Ankara’s official letter asking for changes had been received at the United Nations New York Headquarters on Wednesday.

The day before, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavasoglu had tweeted a photo of him signed the letter, addressed to the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres.

With the letter that I sent to the UN Secretary General today, we registered the name of our country in a foreign language at the United Nations as ‘Turkiye,'” he wrote, including Umlaut above “U”.

He added that the change would end the process of “increasing the value of our country’s brand,” an initiative that began by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has led the country for almost two decades.

Over the past few years, the country has tried to change branding on its products from “Made in Turkey” to “Made in Turkiye.”

In addition to making the UN nomenclature matches how the country is spelled in Turkish, renewal will also help distinguish countries from birds with the same name in English.

Changes in names may seem silly for some people but place Erdogan in the role of protectors, protect international respect for the country,” said Georgetown University Professor Mustafa Aksacal as quoted in The New York Times.

The newspaper also noted that the move came ahead of the presidential election next year and a hundred years of establishment of the state after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.