It's retarded even. In Germany there is a city called Aachen, which was the seat of Charlemagne. In French we call that city, which is also part of our history, Aix-la-Chapelle, so I do not see why we can't call the City Constantinople and you Istanbul without starting a debate.
It was called Constantinople until "relatively" recently, then the Turks decided they didn't like that name anymore, went with Istanbul (which is weird cause it's said to also come from a Greek phrase so basically it's also a Greek name) and in roder to enforce the new name they started declining all the mail that was sent with the destination "Constantinople" and they returned them. I got to say, it's a genious way to enforce something like that, i chuckled when i read about it.
Not sure why they changed it after so many years of using it though. I think Constantinople has a more badass ring to it.
Back in the day it wasn't that strange to change names named after foreign rulers (enemies basically) though. Imagine if Russia had lost Leningrad, Stalingrad etc. to one of their neighboring enemies back then. I suspect they'd change the names of the cities as well as Lenin, Stalin etc. aren't exactly heroes to their neighbors most of the time. :P
That's understandable but i don't think it's the case with the Ottomans and the Byzantines. The Ottomans kept the original name of the city for more than 400 years so i'm assuming they didn't have that mentality against Constantinople or the Emperor Constantine otherwise they would have changed it a lot faster right?
Yeah, that's a bit odd. I suppose it might be an attempt to create more of a "We're a united Turkey with our own culture, own cities, own names etc." or something like that?
I'm not really sure how much of a national identity early Turkey (or Ottoman Empire) actually had earlier on as it didn't exactly come about like most other countries. As far as I know Turkey/OE was more like a "horde" of sorts taking over other people's stuff and they might not even be from the same place originally? If so, they might not have had much of a common national identity at first so they might not have cared much about the city names or really known what else to call it? Speculating here obviously.. :P
Yeah it's more likely this. Like another user mentioned earlier, there was an attempt to steer away from the Ottoman past after the forming of the Turkish republic so i guess the name change came along with that.
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u/youthanasian Turkey Aug 15 '17
Wish that shitty constantinople istanbul song has never been created.