Turkish Airlines will rebrand itself into its local name Türkiye Havayolları. This has been announced by the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The new move comes after Turkey has changed its name in the United Nations from Turkey to Türkiye. All Turkish Airlines aircraft will carry the new branding of the airline.

Source: https://www-aerotime-aero.cdn.ampprojec ... nges?v=amp

Should we laugh or cry?

Why is the president announcing this, is he the CEO of the Airline?

Clydenairways wrote:

Why is the president announcing this, is he the CEO of the Airline?

I believe you mean the Havayollari.

Lufthansa manages to brand itself in German and nobody makes a fuss. KLM's initials are from Dutch words

MalevTU134 wrote:

Should we laugh or cry?

Why would you laugh or cry? It's nothing to do with you. Good for them for standing by and embracing their native identity. Türkiye is a beautiful country rich in their own culture and history, they have every right to be identified by their actual name.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall in their marketing department!

YES!!!!
Please also bring back this livery:

AAMDanny wrote:

MalevTU134 wrote:

Should we laugh or cry?

Why would you laugh or cry? It's nothing to do with you. Good for them for standing by and embracing their native identity. Türkiye is a beautiful country rich in their own culture and history, they have every right to be identified by their actual name.

Do only Türkiye people fly on that airline? Being a mega-connector airline, they have a large % of foreign pax flying them. So better have a name that's able to be pronounced and recalled by foreign pax too.
IMO a PR and marketing disaster this is.

Scorpio wrote:

Considering the reason the country rebranded itself (to not be confused with the bird), this all smacks of classic 'dictator with insecurity issues' complex...

Agree. Is Batman, Turkey/Turkiye still 'Batman'?

Well good for them! Nice to see them embrace their rich heritage and culture.

I really hope this move doesn’t alienate transiting passengers in what seems a major rebrand exercise.

Turkish airlines is synonymous in the travel market and the above rebrand may change this. For the better or worse only time will tell.

Turkish Airlines has become one of the world's most successful airlines by careful building a global brand. In fact, their tagline a few years' back was "Globally Yours". There is nothing global about this change, it does no favors to the airline, that seems to have become another toy for the Turkish autocrat to play with, pandering to nationalism. Nothing good can come out of mixing politics with TK's successful brand. Time will tell.

In a way a good thing. As long as they can use an acronym or short name that is easy to use in different languages. Like indeed KLM or TAP. I remember the time Turkish was generally known as THY. It could become that again. In my opinion much better than 'Turkish'. Such a generic name that you can slap on anything that happens to come from that country.
Now let's hope Air France someday gets pushed into using a more local name as well. Everything in France needs to be in French, why not the name of the national airline...?

Major branding fail, “ Turkiye” would have just sufficed.

ehusmann wrote:

Now let's hope Air France someday gets pushed into using a more local name as well. Everything in France needs to be in French, why not the name of the national airline...?

Perhaps they mean to say they feel so established and secure in their position that it is high time we all learned a little Turkish.

As much as I like it, I don't think this is going to do TK any good, they are a connecting hub airline and here in the UK Turkish airline has a pretty big presence with several flights a day into LHR, MAN, BHX, LGW, STN etc. Türkiye Havayolları does not.

Is it going to be like an Air India where one side of the plane is the local language and the other says Turkish Airlines (or Turkiye Airlines, or something similar)?

So I guess no more liveries like this one?

Lets stay focused on aviation and avoid political commentary.

Thank you

The country's name change was adopted by the UN the last month, so obviously the airline's name will change.

There have been quite a few nation change names that I can recall from Rhodesia to Burma, to Zaire, to Czechoslovakia, British Honduras, Ceylon, Siam, etc

IMO Havayolları is unnecessarily long and complicated.

According to Google Translate, "Hava" is Air in Turkish. If "Türkiye Hava" makes gramatical sense, I think it would be better for an international market.

Why are politics and nationalism coming into "re-branding" a successful airline. Brand recognition/value is everything in this business. This is big mistake.

Like others have said, good for TK. Some here say that changing the name to a Turkish language name will or might scare away people from using them but what about KL and LH who are also global airlines with important and big connecting hubs and using their own language names? Why would TK be any different really, especially if they will use their old name THY? Only because they're bigger, it is a horrible move? As long as the service and connections TK will keep offering is appealing to its customers, I don't think anyone will care about this name change. In any case, good luck to TK.

A388

I like it.It's bold, cultural, confident , distinctive. theyre already a global success so it won't cause them a problem really

Ugh, I find this very strange move. There's nothing wrong with using a name in a local language as Lufthansa shows for example (or also Malev, Avianca, TAM,... if shortcuts count). But doing this AFTER the airline has become a big player in the region in the last 30 years as "Turkish Airlines", and the name has now been hammered into customers' heads, and exactly AFTER they moved away from "Türk Hava Yollari" at the beginning of this development, is very odd from a marketing perspective, isn't it?
The "Lufthansa" or "KLM" brands have been known for decades as they are. That would be different if there was "German Airlines" that had become popular over half a century, and now suddenly, they would become "Lufthansa". That would be exactly as strange.

Personally, I like it, but anyhow, this doesn't seem right to me.

the plans are not exactly new. 2 years ago they wanted to re-label the airplanes. TÜRK HAVA YOLLARI on one side and TURKISH AIRLINES on the other.

Now the brand TURKISH AIRLINES will probably be supplemented by TÜRKIYE HAVA YOLLARI

Anything else would be nonsense. Why should one discard a large, strong and, above all, successful brand?

TURKISH AIRLINES embodies the whole of Türkiye and has nothing to do with the English word for turkey.

This is my opinion

SCQ83 wrote:

IMO Havayolları is unnecessarily long and complicated.

According to Google Translate, "Hava" is Air in Turkish. If "Türkiye Hava" makes gramatical sense, I think it would be better for an international market.

Perhaps you need more Turkish than Google can provide. No it doesn’t make sense

SCQ83 wrote:

IMO Havayolları is unnecessarily long and complicated.

According to Google Translate, "Hava" is Air in Turkish. If "Türkiye Hava" makes gramatical sense, I think it would be better for an international market.

Türkiye Hava does not make sense. ‘Hava’ as a stand-alone word in Turkish purely refers to ‘air/weather’ where the English abbreviation of ‘Air’ from ‘Airlines/Airways’ does not translate to Turkish.

Hava = Air
Yolları = Ways

dmstorm22 wrote:

Is it going to be like an Air India where one side of the plane is the local language and the other says Turkish Airlines (or Turkiye Airlines, or something similar)?

This makes a lot of sense IMO. Or they could just write THY on each side.

Even though it is somewhat redundant, just like KLM is branded as KLM in large lettering with a subscript that says Royal Dutch Airlines, they could brand Turkish as THY in big letters and write Turkish Airlines right next to it in subscript. No sense at all in writing out the entire Türkiye Havayolları, which of course, is not in English, without writing the English translation, just so that many people can't understand it.

Take a look at Etihad, Emirates, and Qatar: they all use Arabic but also write their English names conveniently in large lettering so that everyone knows who they are. And it even creates a pretty logo, since Emirates would not be as recognizable without their distinctive Arabic lettering which has become an integral part of their logo.

Air India has actually done their lettering in a very smart manner. On the fuselage, one side will say Air India in Hindi and the other side in English. Except for on their 787s, on the tail, one side of the vertical stabilizer says Air India in Hindi and the other in English as well. However, the tails are painted in the opposite manner of the fuselage such that if the fuselage is in Hindi, the tail is in English, and vice versa.

English fuselage, Hindi tail https://images.indianexpress.com/2013/01/Air-Indoa.jpg

Hindi fuselage, English tail https://cdn.britannica.com/61/146261-00 ... a-A319.jpg

there has just been a statement from the ruling AKP party.

The name, as previously known, TÜRK HAVA YOLLARI will remain.

But whether there will be changes in English, TURKISH AIRLINES, was not discussed.

davidjohnson6 wrote:

Lufthansa manages to brand itself in German and nobody makes a fuss. KLM's initials are from Dutch words

The Lufthansa brand has been around for almost a century in one form or another and isn't hard to pronounce to westerners. KLM is the world's oldest airline, publicly branded as KLM for 103 years.

Brand recognition in this industry is key. For a lot of casual travelers who had good experiences on Turkish Airlines may not recognize Türkiye Havayolları at all and book elsewhere.

Not to mention, having a western name for an airline is pretty common. Air China, Vietnam Airlines, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air India, Cathay Pacific, etc.

This move certainly isn't going to increase bookings for TK.

As a few have mentioned, the country's legal name change was approved by the U.N, so it would be silly to keep using an old name for a place.

The airlines legal name for more than half a century has been Türk Hava Yolları, so its simply adopting the use of this globally which matches the name of the nation.

There certainly is no law that requires the usage of solely English branding. The use of Türkiye branding is actually something that started a few years ago, particularly in the tourism sector where digital and print media would use Türkiye word.

caverunner17 wrote:

This move certainly isn't going to increase bookings for TK.

I think you are way overblowing things.

Nationalistic Turks in Germany are a turn off for the locals. I don't know how the Marketing team will soften it.

Is it Türkiye Havayollari or Türkiye Hava Yollari?

How is Türkiye pronounced?

Good luck getting to people to say “Türkiye Havayolları” and not just "Turkish" for the foreseeable future.

xwb777 wrote:

Turkish Airlines will rebrand itself into its local name Türkiye Havayolları. This has been announced by the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Not surprising since some times ago he announced the country's official change of name to Türkiye even in english. Also it's not like the airline's new name is indeed that new.

LAXintl wrote:

As a few have mentioned, the country's legal name change was approved by the U.N, so it would be silly to keep using an old name for a place.

It wasn't Air Turkey though. It was Turkish Airlines.

Just like Swiss Airlines not Switzerland Airlines.

Renaming a global brand to something that's harder to spell and pronounce when the country name isn't even in the airlines isn't going to help with marketing and sales.

The whole thing is just weird and a political stunt. There's no reason to not keep both the western and traditional names, ie Deutschland vs Germany or Czechia vs Czech Republic.

janders wrote:

Lets stay focused on aviation and avoid political commentary.

Thank you

The name change is purely a political decision.

I always found it funny a country shares the name with a sad fowl.

Would not blame them for changing the name and benefit from breaking the association.

For the airline, how about use THY which is also their ICAO callsign. I recall in 80s/90s had THY painted on planes.



https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 6470728831).jpg#file

I wonder how this will be reacted to in Russia which is now a much larger than ever market for THY. It is incredible the number of daily flights from Russia to Antalya since the sanctions were introduced.

ehusmann wrote:

[...]Now let's hope Air France someday gets pushed into using a more local name as well. Everything in France needs to be in French, why not the name of the national airline...?

He??? Air + France are just perfect 100% French words.

I don’t think going from Turkish to Turkiye will be too much of an issue. I think you can still make the connection. Plus different countries around the world such as the Middle East/ parts of Asia already call Turkey as Turkiye.

China managed to rebrand Peking as Beijing. India rebranded Bombay as Mumbai
The rest of the world took notice, changed and managed to cope

matthew11 wrote:

I don’t think going from Turkish to Turkiye will be too much of an issue. I think you can still make the connection. Plus different countries around the world such as the Middle East/ parts of Asia already call Turkey as Turkiye.

Curious - is the pronunciation any different?

I would assume there might be some slight difference, but if I as an English speaker just say Turkey as I say it now, will it be noticeably different?

dmstorm22 wrote:

matthew11 wrote:

I don’t think going from Turkish to Turkiye will be too much of an issue. I think you can still make the connection. Plus different countries around the world such as the Middle East/ parts of Asia already call Turkey as Turkiye.

Curious - is the pronunciation any different?

I would assume there might be some slight difference, but if I as an English speaker just say Turkey as I say it now, will it be noticeably different?

The pronunciation is now "Turki-yay". Don't have any issue with that but the new airline name is not one that rolls off the tongue, atleast for non-Turks anyway. Wonder if there will be any other changes such as livery adjustments.

dmstorm22 wrote:

matthew11 wrote:

I don’t think going from Turkish to Turkiye will be too much of an issue. I think you can still make the connection. Plus different countries around the world such as the Middle East/ parts of Asia already call Turkey as Turkiye.

Curious - is the pronunciation any different?

I would assume there might be some slight difference, but if I as an English speaker just say Turkey as I say it now, will it be noticeably different?

Very little difference, for example in Arabic you just add an “a” at the end ie you pronounce “Turkey-ya”

AeroTime headline: Turkish Airlines to rebrand into Türkiye Havayolları, Erdogan says
Last line of article: AeroTime has asked Turkish Airlines for a comment.

The rebrand is off to a slow start.

It's really not that big of deal. As stated it's only he planes. It's not like they are changing the signs at the curb.

The legal name has been Turkiye Hava Yollari since 1956. Ideally, the legal name would be re-added to the titles. However, this also coincides with an official name change of the country to Turkiye.

This wouldn’t be unusual. Royal Air Maroc does English on one side and Arabic on the other.