State imposed place name change in Turkey and the response of Giresun residents

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1558771 (Table of Contents)

In 1913, the Ottoman state began attempting to systematically impose new place names across the territory under its control. Although the intensity of the efforts varied greatly, place name change would continue through the end of the Ottoman Empire and on into the Republic of Turkey. By 1968, when a volume containing all the changes was published by the Interior Ministry, roughly thirty percent of settlement names in Turkey had been changed. Renaming continued sporadically until the 1990s. This thesis inquires into these attempts at name change in Turkey with a focus on how people responded to the changes in their everyday lives. The value of place names as formulated in human and cultural geography is explored in order to determine why people may have rejected or accepted the state imposed names. Place name change, rather than being approached solely as a nation-building project motivated by Turkification, is also considered as being a technique of governmentality. This thesis does not refer to the changes as one project or policy that lasted from 1913 throughout the better part of the century, as does previous studies; rather, they are seen a series of attempts that did not always have the same rationale. In order to understand how people responded to the changes, this thesis relies on fieldwork carried out in the Eastern Black Sea Province of Giresun.