Well, Of course nothing can stop you from doing it. But we like it if somebody changes their name and uses a Turkish name when they decide to live in Turkey (just like we appreciate it if somebody speaks our language). Chance are even if you don´t change your name, we eventually would call you with a (similar sounding) Turkish name. That would only mean that we think you are one of us now.

Last night I was watching TV and there was a news about former Fenerbahçe player "Mehmet" Aurelio (originally from Brasil but he´s also got Turkish nationality and his real name is Marco Aurelio). He plays for Real Betis in Spain now. They showed his shirts purchased by Real Betis fans and it reads Mehmet Auralio on them. And guess what is written on the plate of his car. TC 1881. And guess what it means. TC means Turkish Republic in Turkish and 1881 is the birth year of Atatürk. We like this kind of things.

You shouldn´t have to change something about yourself to please the crowd. It´s more of a "if you want to accepted by us you better look like us!"

Learning the language of the country you live in is one thing - changing yourself is something else.

if a turkish footballer who plays for germany ( like Mesut Özil, Mehmet Scholl) changed his name as Hans, he would be considered as a traitor in turkey we turkish are not understandable at all !!!

Hehehehe

That is why we love you all so much

In fact changing names policy is not only adopted in Turkey.

People who immigrated from the middle east to south american early 1900 until mid 60s were obliged to change their names, the same goes for mexico and the united states.

So mohamed becomes manuel in mexico and michael in the US, suleiman becomes solomon in the US, khattar = tucker, Nasser = Nash, salman = Sam, and the list goes on.

In south american there was an official names list and if a name is not listed then you have to change it.

Where as in the US, it was left to the imagination of the immigration officer in Ellis Island.

I am not sure whether the chinese immigrants who passed through san fransisco faced the same thing...may be they named every  LEE or Chan because it is easy to pronounce such names! am only guessing..

I can tell about Ellis island because my grandfather passed through there...

So you see not only western names are BED BED but eastern as well depends on  which side you come from

If anyone is interested in checking names on ship manifest  here is the link

http://www.ellisisland.org/

who knows may be you find a distant relative

I found my grandfather records on ships he took from (mount lebanon, Turkey) to the US during his many trips to and from the US. At that time Lebanon was still under ottoman rule and lebanese had ottoman passports.

yes i agree...

If that rule is an official and legal one (I dont know), I have found another reason never to want to apply to Turkish citizenship. My first always was that it could get me in jail for criticizing something. The second was to have to put your religion on your passport (and dont tell me ´it is not compulsory´, not writing it simply means you are not a sunni muslim, so you might as well just write it), now the third is the name change.

I really object to it. I understand that letters that are not in the Turkish alphabet are changed, I think it happens everywhere for a logical reason. but a full name change? I was born with this name. My parents gave it to me and I consider it as a sort of gift from them. They named me and it made me theirs even more. So who are ´you´ to take it away for funny reasons as  ´you like it when we learn your language´ (I dont see the connection with my name really.), ´you have difficulties pronouncing our names´ (then make some goddamn effort, like it was that easy for us to pronounce your names), ´you want to make us feel like we are one of you´ (we already felt like that otherwise we wouldnt apply for citizenship I suppose, and apart from that, you could easily give someone a second nick name or whatever, but take away something so personal and then say ´we just wanted to make you feel at home´?? )

Really.

I would either never ever in a million year think of changing my name, or becoming citizen of another country or living another country (well maybe for a short while only).

Turkish people not only change my name while pronounciating (I can stand that, all English and German speaking people do it as well) but they - when I tell them how to pronounce - also write it differently. My name suddenly changes into Türüdi.

But most fun I have when officials or hotel staff need to copy my name from my passport. I have 3 given Christian names and a surname that consists of two words. Well, I´ve seen all options but very rare the correct one.

maybe, just maybe because you Dutch people have a strange ( ) way of pronouncing things! the street names in your country can only be rememberd as "this one", "that one", "the one with that river", "the one with 4 a´s and 6 t´s next to each other (in the name)"