Erdogan wants people to call Turkey "Türkiye" even in English and other languages

[palandio]

Maybe the following is a slightly German-centric take on the topic of Czech Republic/Czechia, but whatever.

In the German language the term Böhmen (Bohemia) had lost most of its ethnic connotation long before 1900. Hence to denote the land/state of the Czechs the terms Tschechien and Tschechei came into being. I'm not old enough to say which of the two terms can claim more historic legitimacy. What I can say is that the older generations living in Germany right now tended to use Tschechei to refer to the Western part of Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately Tschechei reminds the Czechs of the Nazi usage of the term, particularly in "Erledigung der Rest-Tschechei" ("Finishing off" the Czech rump-state* in 1939). Additionally the -ei ending, which is rarer than the standard -ien, puts the ethnicity at the center and doesn't necessarily refer to a consistently defined territory or administrative unit **. I don't know exactly, but that could play a role, too. In 1994 for whatever reason Czechia decided to officially call itself Czech Republic and translations of that in all languages (Tschechische Republik in German), only to notice that Germans of course continued to colloquially call it by the unloved name Tschechei. Therefore German politics and media and even official representatives of Czechia in Germany reintroduced the term Tschechien that had already occurred at the beginning of the 20th century, but fallen out of use in the meantime. The general introduction of Czechia and equivalents in other languages in my opinion at least partially comes from the need to officialize the German language situation.

* Czechoslovakia had already been forced to cede the Sudetenland to Germany in 1938
** The contemporary examples for the -ei ending are Slowakei, Mongolei, Lombardei, Walachei, Kabylei, Mandschurei and of course most prominently Türkei, I wonder if Erdogan wants to change that, too.

In my opinion a case like that of Czechia preferring Tschechien over Tschechei is completely ok. Both are German words. On the other trying to impose forms onto other languages that are alien to their phonology is a thing that only joke countries or countries ruled by joke people do. I have not yet encountered a single counterexample.