ARMENIAN PLACE NAMES CHANGED IN TURKEY
Panorama.am
13:01 14/08/2009
President of Turkey Abdulah Gul used the original name Norsin to refer
to Bitlis’ Guroymak district during his visit, that usage sparked
heated discussions over place names in Turkey, Turkish media writes.
It is said that around 28,000 names of provinces, districts, villages,
rivers and streams have been changed officially. Most of them, about
12,000, have been village names.
A 2000 publication by Fýrat University faculty member Dr. Harun
Tuncel on the Turkish villages whose names have been changed sheds
light on the topic of the name changes that have been taking place
for 50 years. In 1949, the Provincial Administration Law went into
effect, which led to the 1957 establishment of a Name Changing Expert
Commission to review the names of around 75,000 residential places
in Turkey.
The commission decided to change 28,000 of them. Between 1965 and 1970
and from 1975-76, the commission also evaluated the names of natural
bodies such as lakes, changing nearly 2,000 names of such bodies.
As in the Black Sea region, some of the village names in eastern and
southeastern Turkey that have been changed are Turkish names. But
the vast majority of names that have been altered in these regions
were changed because they were of Armenian, Kurdish or Arabic origin.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
