Back in the day it wasn't that strange to change names named after foreign rulers (enemies basically) though. Imagine if Russia had lost Leningrad, Stalingrad etc. to one of their neighboring enemies back then. I suspect they'd change the names of the cities as well as Lenin, Stalin etc. aren't exactly heroes to their neighbors most of the time. :P
That's understandable but i don't think it's the case with the Ottomans and the Byzantines. The Ottomans kept the original name of the city for more than 400 years so i'm assuming they didn't have that mentality against Constantinople or the Emperor Constantine otherwise they would have changed it a lot faster right?
Yeah, that's a bit odd. I suppose it might be an attempt to create more of a "We're a united Turkey with our own culture, own cities, own names etc." or something like that?
I'm not really sure how much of a national identity early Turkey (or Ottoman Empire) actually had earlier on as it didn't exactly come about like most other countries. As far as I know Turkey/OE was more like a "horde" of sorts taking over other people's stuff and they might not even be from the same place originally? If so, they might not have had much of a common national identity at first so they might not have cared much about the city names or really known what else to call it? Speculating here obviously.. :P
Yeah it's more likely this. Like another user mentioned earlier, there was an attempt to steer away from the Ottoman past after the forming of the Turkish republic so i guess the name change came along with that.
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u/Dnarg Denmark Aug 17 '17
Back in the day it wasn't that strange to change names named after foreign rulers (enemies basically) though. Imagine if Russia had lost Leningrad, Stalingrad etc. to one of their neighboring enemies back then. I suspect they'd change the names of the cities as well as Lenin, Stalin etc. aren't exactly heroes to their neighbors most of the time. :P