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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Why "Turkish Magician", why not "Magician"?

Makes for an interesting story. Apparently you can scam yourself to the top of the world and cause death and suffering all around even if you are not a big blue eyed turtlenecked white woman with a really deep voice.

Because he’s from Turkey, where he was a magician.

You mean Türkiye?

That would be in Turkish and I’m writing in English.

Apparently it's supposed to be Türkiye in English now too. If you don't comply, you might receive a stern talking to from the ambassador!

Turkish here. Let politicians use whatever name they want. "Türkiye" is hard to pronounce in English and "Turkey" worked just fine for a hundred years. I'm not gonna report you :)

Apparently based on Kiev vs Kyiv we’ll all switch to Türkiye after Russia invades.

Speaking of Turkey, how is the IT business and startup culture in Turkey? Just generally wondering. One hears very little of this big country in an obscure corner of Europe.

Depending on the administration in the states, you could also just be assaulted by erdogan's body guards with zero recourse.

I think parent is referring to that Türkiye is now the requested English term. https://www.trtworld.com/turkey/turkey-to-use-t%C3%BCrkiye-i...

Funny thing is Türkiye is a French exonym for Turkey (la Turquie). It is not even a Turkish word or a word coined in Turkey.

The suffix -iye, however, is also a suffix that is used in Turkish coined words of Persian and Arabic compounds where it means -ness or -ity: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/یت#Ottoman_Turkish

There is kurabiye (gulabiye = gulab (rosewater) + -iye), and later coins such as cumhuriyet (cumhur (general public) + -iyet).

Türkiye is not such a coinage. In Ottoman Turkish Türkiye would mean Turkness.

One cannot enforce how to write or pronounce stuff in other languages, speakers of any language can call Turkey whatever they like in their language and what Erdogan decides has absolutely no value outside of Turkey.

It’s factual, but I think it’s there because it sounds exotic and makes the title more interesting.

He falsely claimed to have a Turkish MD and probably used the fact that BioNTech was founded by Turkish doctors (and what he claimed is similar to what they are experimenting with vaccines for) to make himself seem closer to the real thing.

Interesting idea, though maybe a bit convoluted. Also Uğur Şahin immigrated to Germany at the age of 4 and was educated there. Calling him a "Turkish doctor" isn't technically wrong, but...

I won't want to get into the accuracy of calling Uğur Şahin Turkish, but for a period of time the "COVID vaccine was developed in Germany by Turkish immigrants" was a really popular talking point, especially in relation to some political arguments that took place in English speaking countries.

If somebody says "Turkish doctor" I somehow assume he means a doctor who grew up and educated in Turkey.

I don't argue with people who identify as Turkish or German. I don't know if Sahin identifies as either or both. I know that it is harder for Turkish immigrants to get a good education in Germany, especially during the time he grew up in. I also don't care much about the debate of how useful immigrants are, because the result may very well be that they aren't on average that useful and that quite a large portion of criminals are immigrants. Usefulness or consequence to society should not matter for the rights of an individual. And immigration control always comes down to violating someones rights in order to somehow get rid of them if they are unwanted for some reason.

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