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ANKARA: Names Of 12,211 Villages Were Changed In Turkey

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  • ANKARA: Names Of 12,211 Villages Were Changed In Turkey

    NAMES OF 12,211 VILLAGES WERE CHANGED IN TURKEY
    Tolga Korkut, [email protected]

    BIA Magazine
    http://www.bianet.org/english/minorities/ 114491-names-of-12-211-villages-were-changed-in-tu rkey
    May 14 2009
    Turkey

    According to Ass. Prof. Tuncel, 35 percent of villages in Turkey have
    had their names changed since 1940.

    Ass. Prof. Harun Tuncel, head of the Human and Economic Geography
    department at Fırat University, Elazıg, has carried out a study of
    changes in toponymy in Turkey.

    He has found that the names of around 35 percent of villages, that
    is 12,211 villages, have been changed over the years.

    A count of all types of settlements revealed that around 28,000 names
    were changed.

    In an article published in the university's social science journal
    in 2000, Tuncel had said that locals had not completely accepted the
    new names. Especially middle-aged and older people still used the
    old names.

    Some names may be reinstalled

    Radikal journalist Ä°smet Berkan has recently quoted Prime Minister
    Erdogan as saying that a "symbolic" step regarding the Kurdish question
    could be to give Kurdish place names. Minister of the Interior BeÅ~_ir
    Atalay also said recently, when asked, that "if there is local demand",
    villages could be given Kurdish names.

    Ahmet Turk, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party
    (DTP), commented, "You can change names, but if you ban the language,
    then what sense does that make? No Kurd uses the new Turkish names
    anyway. They use the same (old) names among themselves."

    Turkification

    According to Tuncel's study, many villages in the Trabzon and Rize
    provinces of the Black Sea had their names changed from Armenian,
    Laz or Georgian into Turkish. In the East and Southeast of Turkey,
    names were mostly changed from Armenian, Kurdish and Arabic.

    Village names have been changed since the first decade of the 20th
    century, but especially since the 1940s.

    Most changes in Eastern Black Sea and Southeastern Turkey

    Tuncel lists the number of villages whose names were changed per
    province in Turkey:

    Adana (169), Adıyaman (224), Afyonkarahisar (88), Agrı (374),
    Amasya (99), Ankara (193), Antalya (168), Artvin (101), Aydın (69),
    Balıkesir (110), Bilecik (32), Bingöl (247), Bitlis (236), Bolu
    (182), Burdur (49), Bursa (136), Canakkale (53), Cankırı (76),
    Corum (103), Denizli (53), Diyarbakır (555), Edirne (20), Elazıg
    (383), Erzincan (366), Erzurum (653), EskiÅ~_ehir (70), Gaziantep
    (279), Giresun (167), GumuÅ~_hane (343), Hakkâri (128), Hatay (117),
    Isparta (46), Ä°cel (112), Ä°stanbul (21), Ä°zmir (68), Kars (398),
    Kastamonu (295), Kayseri (86), Kırklareli (35), KırÅ~_ehir (39),
    Kocaeli (26), Konya (236), Kutahya (93), Malatya (217), Manisa (83),
    KahramanmaraÅ~_ (105), Mugla (70), MuÅ~_ (297), NevÅ~_ehir (24),
    Nigde (48), Ordu (134), Rize (105), Sakarya (117), Samsun (185),
    Siirt (392), Sinop (59), Sivas (406), Tekirdag (19), Tokat (245),
    Trabzon (390), Tunceli (273), Å~^anlıurfa (389), UÅ~_ak (47), Van
    (415), Yozgat (90), Zonguldak (156).
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