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Turkey Renames "Foreign" Animals
Mar 4, 2005

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has renamed some animal species, saying foreign scientists opposed to its territorial integrity had chosen their former names with ill intent, the Environment Ministry has said.

A sheep species previously known as Ovis Armeniana was renamed Ovis Orientalis Anatolicus. A species of red fox(A fox in Kurdistan area) was renamed as Vulpes Vulpes rather than Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica.

"Unfortunately there are many other species in Turkey which were named this way with ill intentions. This ill intent is so obvious that even species only found in our country were given names against Turkey's unity," the statement said.

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Non-Turkish words were seen as symbols of the past, and there was great nationalist enthusiasm, supported by government policies, to get rid of them. Purification of the language became a national cause. Dictionaries began to drop Arabic and Persian words and sought to resurrect archaic terms or words from Turkish dialects or to coin new words from old stems and roots to be used in their place. The Turkish Language Society (Türk Dil Kurumu), founded in 1932, supervised the collection and dissemination of Turkish folk vocabulary and folk phrases to be used in place of foreign words. The citizenry at large was invited to suggest alternatives to words and expressions of non-Turkish origin, and many responded. In 1934 lists of new Turkish words began to be published, and in 1935 they began to appear in newspapers.

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Facism is notoriously anti-satyrical.

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This is why, under Jebediah Caesar, third of his line, blessed be their names and may they ever reign, the heretic and blasphemer Jon Stewart will be stoned to death, in the Old Testament manner.

So it is written; so it shall be done.

[ 08 April 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

US Senator demands scientific name for humans be changed to "Hetero Sapiens"

[ 09 April 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

Slight tangent, but it seems likely that the Linnaean system of taxonomy is going to be revised anyway. The Turks could argue that they're on the cutting edge; or, if some of those major categories turn out to be wrong, they could find their new terms outdated very quickly.

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Originally posted by skdadl:

Slight tangent, but it seems likely that the Linnaean system of taxonomy is going to be revised anyway.

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Originally posted by skdadl:

Slight tangent, but it seems likely that the Linnaean system of taxonomy is going to be revised anyway. The Turks could argue that they're on the cutting edge; or, if some of those major categories turn out to be wrong, they could find their new terms outdated very quickly.

Taxonomy fascinates me. It is so ... imaginary.

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Ataturk was also big on rewriting history, so as establish a creation myth for the new state, very much in the vein of some of the craziness going on with the Goths up north at roughly the same time. Psychobabble mixed with sociobiology.

A great modinizer he insisted that the 'new' Turks should don European style hats as opposed to the traditional Fez -- the Fez being brimless was a hat that you could prey in, and Atatruk was not big on Islam at all. An example of his anti-islamic Turkification can be seen in his law making it unlawful to make the "call to prayer," in the traditonal Arabic.

[ 09 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]