Update Turkey name with Türkiye

[beytarovski]

Turkey officially changes name at UN to "Türkiye".

Data changes verified with:

ISO 3166 Name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_3166_country_codes#TUR1
UN: https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-türkiye
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/03/turkey-changes-name-to-turkiye-as-other-name-is-for-the-birds

Discussion of using "ü" in English and why it's okay to use:
https://www.quora.com/How-could-Turkey-change-their-English-name-to-Türkiye-There-wasnt-even-an-ü-in-the-English-alphabet-What-should-I-do-with-the-adjective-Should-I-say-Türkiyish

[dmythro]

Hi @beytarovski. Sorry for the delay. I did check this, and feels like the name should be Turkiye in English as there's no ü in English alphabet. I did read the discussion and there's no strict "pro" for using ü but Turkiye is good enough for consistency (and probably screen readers etc). The name is strictly English in this library and native was updated to Türkiye a long time ago.

Any other thoughts on this? Feels like Turkiye in English is the most consistent solution here. But it also feels like it's best to be updated with a feature like #35 so country is easily found by its old name and no breaking changes for existing code which uses something like getCountryCode util.

[beytarovski]

Hi, thanks for reviewing this, dear dmythro!

Türkiye is not a native word only. It’s an English word right now. I think it's the only word in English that contains a foreign letter.

✅ The US government also uses Türkiye in its English publications: https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/09/the-reopening-of-the-iraq-turkiye-pipeline/
✅ It's standardized by ISO 3166.

I'd go with Türkiye with eyes closed, which is already an English word.

If you're not 100% sure, you may also consider Turkey (Türkiye) until it's spread enough 👉 see here.

But, Turkiye (without "ü") doesn't mean anything either for English nor Turkish natives.

❌ Keeping only Turkey is just wrong. It's the same as calling "Istanbul" Constantinople. Calling Istanbul as Constantinople by some people won't change the fact ;)

👉English Prime Minister is also use Türkiye in his tweets: https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1982853597718347840

[janoma]

+1 to this request. Personally, I would be OK with Turkiye in the library, but I think the evidence is compelling for Türkiye as requested. The short and long English names have been updated in the ISO 1366-1 standard for over 3 years at this point, and this package claims to follow that standard. The following screenshot is from the ISO web site:

For users of the library, I would still recommend displaying the native name next to the English name in dropdowns for user selection, which is a common use case:

@dmythro if your concern is the breaking change nature of getCountryCode, I think a condition could be added so that both Turkiye and Türkiye map to the same result. From the full list on the ISO web site, this is the only country with a non-English character in the English name, so I would say the use case is justified. Also, all current matches would still match, it is only one unmatching case that would become matching, which in practice makes this totally backwards compatible.

[dmythro]

@janoma my only concerns are breaking changes as a lot of people use this library, according to NPM and other registries stats. Also as non-native English speaker I'm not sure if they can use "ü" easily for search or we need to make this search smarter etc (on mobile seems easy but you need to know you need to use special char there). Pretty sure a lot of people will still search by the old name.

Other than that, I'm pretty aware how important it is to have changes like this available soon: a lot of people still spell Kyiv wrong even if this change was officially published in 1991 :)

Thanks to discussions like this, we can make these changes right.

[janoma]

I'm not sure if they can use "ü" easily for search or we need to make this search smarter

That's why I recommended updating the logic of the search so it silently starts accepting Türkiye. If this is still too disruptive, this could all go in a new major version. I know it's not the expectation of a lot of people because they associate new major versions with new features (like the alternative names you linked above), but Semantic Versioning doesn't define a major version in terms of features, only in terms of incompatible changes.

In any case, if you are still hesitant, would you accept a PR with a note about this in the README file? I could write a snippet so users who really want this can use patch-package until the change goes in a full package update (probably with a major version bump).

[beytarovski]

Thanks for the update @dmythro . However, this conversation is pointless. The UK President doesn’t care about misunderstandings, and they refer to Türkiye as Türkiye. Similarly, the USA Government calls it Türkiye, and Shopify also calls it Türkiye everywhere on their platform: Shopify. But this repository.

--

Google also calls it Türkiye:

I believe you should refer to it directly as Türkiye (not Turkey, which is no longer a valid country name).

Thanks for your time.