TURKEY'S EX-CAPITAL

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 4, 5 July 1927, Page 9

TURKEY'S EX-CAPITAL

EXIT CONSTANTINE

MUSTAPHA A BETTER NAME

(United Press Association.— Copyright.) (Received sth July, 10 a.m.) CONSTANTINOPLE, 4th July. The Turkish Government has decicled to alter the name of Constantinople to Mustapha Kemal, in honour of tho vit;J.t to tho city of the President of tins Turkish State, Mustapha Kemal, whoso headquarters is the post-war capital oi! Turkey (Angora, in Asia Minor).

The eviction of the name of Peter the Great from Potrograd (now Leningrad) lias given the New Turks a precedent for the greater sacrilego of removing the name of Constantino from the city which, until the post-war reconstruction, was capital of the Turkish Empire, and which has been the gateway between East and West for more than a thousand years. Will the names of ultra-moderns, Lenin and Mustapha, remain, or will classics return under a new balance of power? In 330, A.D., Constantino the Great made the then Byzantium capital of the Roman Empire, and the city was thenceforth called Constantinople. But to the Turks, who took the city on 29th May, 1453, it has always been Stambul or lstnmbul. They may, therefore, claim the right to remove a RomanCliFistian name they never admitted. Tho new choice is, of course, a matter of politics, and possibly of temporary politics.