More on Syriac names in Turkey

ARAMAIC WATCH: More on the legal battle over the use of "foreign" names in Turkey:

What’s in a name? – revisited

BRUSSELS/PARIS - Reuters
BURAK BEKDİL

“Greeks are Turks who think they are Italian,” the old joke goes. A matching phrase for this side of the Aegean could be “Turks are Mongolians who think they are Arabs.” Confusing? Maybe not.

Favlus Ay, a Turkish citizen of Syriac origin, recently appealed to a court to change his surname to “Bartuma,” the Syriac equivalent of “Ay,” meaning “moon.” The court denied his request on the basis of Article 3 of the Law on Family Names which bans the use of surnames “belonging to foreign nations and races.” Ay’s appeal, the verdict read, stood “against national unity.”

Ay did not give up his legal battle, appealing to the Constitutional Court to demand the article’s cancellation. They, too, ruled against the Syriac man’s appeal in order to maintain national unity through a ban on non-Turkish names.

One may think the ban and its legal basis are ridiculous. In fact, the whole story, when seen from a wider angle, is even more ridiculous than the ban itself.

[...]

That's getting pretty ridiculous.

Background here.