Talk:İzmir

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Entry of Joseph de Bauffremont into İzmir, 28 September 1766.

I would like to make a general comment about the "Smyrna" reference to Izmir, at least to the people that have scientific and historical and not nationalist-driven doubts about it. I think it is wrong to wonder why the name Yerevan (unknown to most, in contrast to Smyrna) is not used for Athens while Smyrna does for Izmir, in wiki. First of all, the etymology of the name Izmir itself is derived from the greek, former name. Also, they name "Smyrna" was indeed kept in use by both Muslims and Christians. In contrast, the turkish name Ayvalik was alwasys used, instead of ancient "Kydonies" term. But there is another, substantial reason: The civilization and activities developed throughout history in Izmir were almost exlusively achieved by its greek citizens. This is proved by the cultural and aesthetical fall of Izmir for many decades, after the greeks left under the Population Exchange. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, born in Salonica and not in Anatolia, was aware of that fact: He knew that there would be a significant financial and cultural downfall after the departure of the urban population of the area, but the stabilisation inside his country was of course of highsest importance at those critical times. Dimitris Chrisafinos

Population according to the cited resources.

Hi there -- I'm seeing the population of Izmir -- as a city -- as 4,320,519 in 2019. E.g., see http://www.izmir.gov.tr/istatistiklerle-izmir Am I missing something? where do you get the 2.9m number?

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Requested move 20 December 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. I do not think a relist will break the impasse that's apparent here. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 23:57, 28 December 2022 (UTC)

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İzmir → Izmir – According to Ngram Viewer, Izmir is a much more abundant spelling and aligns with the English alphabet. The spelling Izmir seems to have existed in the English language even before the creation of the Latin-based Turkish alphabet, so it has quite a bit of history. Ayıntaplı (talk) 17:41, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

• Strong oppose we've been through this 13 years ago. Let's not waste time again. See Lonely Planet: "İZMIR'S SEPHARDIC SYNAGOGUES When the Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492, many settled in cities of the Ottoman Empire, in particular Constantinople (İstanbul), ..." yes low-MOS sources don't have Turkish i, but en.wp does and we spell all Latin-font article titles correctly here. Take a brief look at Category:Populated coastal places in Turkey. The change to en.wp MOS that you are are proposing @Ayıntaplı: would see the entire Turkish article corpus have to be moved per WP:CONSISTENCY. And why single out Turkey articles for low-Mos titles? Why not French or German or Spanish or Polish? We've been through this. We had a massive diacritics war a decade ago. And we don't need to restart it in with İzmir. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:59, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
• oppose per In ictu oculi and the pile of other diacritic RMs—blindlynx 20:22, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support The article uses both Izmir and İzmir (with a diacritic) which suggests that people freely use the form they're accustomed to. 13 years ago is a distant enough past to consider revisiting the question. It wouldn't be the first and certainly not the last bitter discussion but that's not an obstacle. Likewise, some other Wikipedia pages with Izmir in the title use the spelling without a diacritic (for example Izmir Marathon, Izmir International Fair, Izmir Ethnography Museum). This all suggests a waning prescriptive view and an expanding descriptive view. The article on Roxelana was moved to Hurrem Sultan (which WP does not some time ago (without diacritics) to reflect a rise in usage of the Turkish name but diacritics were dropped as they're not as prevalent in English language. --Killuminator (talk) 20:31, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support This is the English WP, and we should be looking for the common name in English. A simple Google search will throw up more examples of Izmir than İzmir, but often that may be because the source does not have the font necessary for the diacritic - or it maybe because Izmir is the preferred form. Newspapers and news media seem to use Izmir.. An academic article here uses Izmir, even though the content shows that the source uses İzmir in citations, so the use of Izmir is a deliberate choice. Government sources use Izmir, even when referring to the country as Türkiye (which WP does not). We don't have a problem with Istanbul, and we should not have a problem with Izmir either.--Mhockey (talk) 22:36, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

@Killuminator: @Mhockey: "this is the English WP" yes we heard that infinite times from those trying to strip Lech Wałęsa of diacritics in the great en.wp diacritics war a decade ago. No one has ever denied that low-MOS sources are low-MOS. We all know this. The question is, do you intend to strip the entire article corpus of full fonts? Because if not why pick on this one article? What's particular to this article that means it needs to be treated differently from the rest the encyclopaedia? Because if you do this the war will restart over the entire encyclopedia. It won't stop here. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:54, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Best not to be too simplistic about this. Why Istanbul, not İstanbul? And best not to treat CNN, or the US and UK governments, as "low-MOS". Just try and apply WP:COMMONNAME. It's not always easy. Mhockey (talk) 23:14, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Diacritic War II is not what's being launched here. The remark on Istanbul is very good as it's the most comparable situation. Two large and famous cities in Turkey but no one is pushing for or using İstanbul. Izmir could be seen as a common name just like Istanbul is.--Killuminator (talk) 07:46, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

The question remains, where does this initiative intend to stop? The methodology "this name appears without full fonts in English books without full fonts" could be applied to any article title with full fonts from Għaxaq to Emily Brontë. So another methodology than fonts has to be applied. This Turkish city name is not an exonym, the old English name was Smyrna. If we're going to use the endonym, then we spell it correctly. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:54, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose, in this modern age just omitting diacritics or certain letters is just lazy.--Ortizesp (talk) 22:40, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support. I did Google searches on both Izmir and İzmir of site:nytimes.com , washingtonpost.com , and bbc.com to get a sense what high-quality English language sources use. All of them have a 100% rate of using "Izmir" unadorned. It appears this is similar to Istanbul and Tokyo. Example sources: [5], [6], [7], all from 2020 so not long ago. (It's not just the earthquake story too, that was just the most recent one in the news.) SnowFire (talk) 06:17, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
• Strong oppose per In ictu oculi and blindlynx. There is no convincing argument for making İzmir an exception to the general rule for treating diacritics on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not alone in giving special treatment to Istanbul, but we would be alone in giving special treatment to Istanbul and İzmir. Libhye (talk) 16:10, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
  • I just gave three example links of the NYT, the WaPo, and the BBC using "Izmir." There are many more available if you make the Google search I recommended of "site:your-favorite-English-news-site.com Izmir" / İzmir. So no, Wikipedia would not be alone in using "Izmir". (And COMMONNAME is not "special treatment", it's the standard.) SnowFire (talk) 18:28, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
    • What I meant is that Wikipedia would be alone in singling out Istanbul and İzmir as the only names with İ to be written with I. The sources you mention use I for all relevant names. There are other sources that spell Istanbul with I and all other relevant names with İ, but Wikipedia would be alone in spelling Istanbul and İzmir with I and all other relevant names with İ. There is an extremely long-standing and well-established consensus to disregard diacritics when establishing the commonname, and there is zero chance of it changing. This would be a random exception to that rule and as such special treatment for no good reason. Libhye (talk) 21:41, 25 December 2022 (UTC)
• Support Per WP:COMMONNAME. The spelling with the Turkish I appears only rarely in English. PatricKiwi (talk) 16:04, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose It is not clear what exactly the purpose is. One can not help but wonder about the motivation. Is there difficulty in finding it in Wikipedia? I tried, no, it makes no difference and it is after all the proper and correct spelling in Latin alphabet. Comparison to Istanbul is apt, and maybe Istanbul should be moved to its proper name. It seems like an unnecessary distraction, confusion and arguments that are in no way constructive or make this a better article or improve Wikipedia.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

References

Text sorting

I noticed that Old Smyrna, Smyrna, and this article repeated a lot of topics especially on ancient times. Moreover much of it was not referenced and contained obvious editorial opinions. I thought a special effort should be made to define the contents of each article and move the text around accordingly. I brought it up in the talks of the other articles. There was no objection. So, I've been moving material around. I got the material out of here that belongs under Old Smyrna. Some of it is wrong. Now I'm going to concentrate on Old Smyrna. There is still some material here that belongs under Smyrna. This article should start with the Turks. I don't want to move the ancient new smyrna material into smyrna until I am ready to work on Smyrna. Later, but not too longBotteville (talk) 04:08, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

@Botteville: This article "should start with the Turks"? Then why was everything deleted until Alexander the Great? Also why would you delete everything until "the Turks" as opposed to summarizing? Bogazicili (talk) 18:58, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mr. B. This reply is post my reply below. Whoa, wait a minute! Your standards are way too high to include humble me. Did I stop? Obviously, a gross error. All I did was move material to Smyrna, first pass. You're acting as though you expect to see a polished article. Not today. As for the summarizing, well, I gave some thought to that. The article is not really amenable to summarizing. You'd be summarizing half the article. I expect both articles to be large as it is. We are talking about a city of millions, the second-largest in Turkey. Do you think we could put New York Cily in a small article like this? But, Izmir is at that level. I think you will feel better about this after you check Smyrna. Right now you are asking the questions of an inquisitor. I feel like the target of a Stalinist purge trial or the trial of the perpatrators of the bomb plot against Hitler. Or worse yet, an interrogation by my wife. Oho, you've caught me, b'god. Caught me indeed. I sure am screwed now. I did say it should start with the Turks. And then I DID stop at Alexander, leaving out the Byzantines. Guilty, guilty, guilty. You got me now. I hope you are chuckling. If not, I don't know what to say, except this is not an interrogation. Why don't you put in whatever time you are going to allot for this. When I get back, maybe this year sometime, I will take a look.Botteville (talk) 01:33, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Massive amount of deletion in article

Looks like there was a mass deletion by Botteville in 7-8 September 2023 [8]. Entire sections were deleted such as "Names and etymology" and everything in history section until Alexander the Great. This is the main article. Per Wikipedia:Summary style, it should still have something in history until Alexander the Great. Child articles can be more detailed. The deletion of "Names and etymology" is also inexplicable. We now have an entire paragraph in the lead about:

"The modern name İzmir is the Turkish rendering of the Greek name Smyrna and "Smyrne" (Σμύρνη). In medieval times, Westerners used forms like Smire, Zmirra, Esmira, Ismira, which was rendered as İzmir into Turkish, originally written as ازمير with the Ottoman Turkish alphabet."

While the lead doesn't cover large parts of the article such as education. Not to mention large amounts of information such as Ti-smurna was also lost without being summarized. Also given the article size, the removal seems unnecessary. Bogazicili (talk) 18:54, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Mr. B, Things like this are pretty much subjective. The bottom line is, I think you should follow your judgement. I can tell you what I intended and why, but of course I have no license to push that ahead of someone else's opinion. Now, Izmir is quite a large city, and there is much materal on the modern city there. There is also much material on the ancient city to be covered. It seemed to me all the material was way too much for a single article. But this is not a unique or unusual situation. There are a lot of big cities like that. The usual Wikipedia answer is to split the article. Some stuff should be offloaded to one or more other articles. In my experience, and I think you will find this to be true generally on WP, old cities like this that have gone on into the future and now have a modern history as well as an ancient are usually described by an article for the ancient and an article for the modern. I tentatively split the article. What I did NOT do is clean up and finish either one. We never finish anything around here. I do not see the point however in repeating the historical material twice! We don't need two etymologies, two archaeologies, two ancient histories, etc. My sentiment was that Izmir should cover the Turkish city. Smyrna should cover the Greek and Byzantine city. If necessary we could create a Smyrna (Byzantene) also. Why did I not continue on it? Well, I got careless and slipped in some modern opinions which when it was pointed out to me I quickly deleted. Then I thought I was too close and needed a break. Also this would give people like you a chance. I would like to say, go ahead, do your stuff. I know, however, how much work it is. Unfortunately it can't get any better unless someone does it. I'd rather not get back to this right now. There are articles worse off that I'm on to. I will eventually get there. Meanwhile I accept all your qvetches. Go ahead, do it the way YOU think it should be done. When I DO get back to it I will try to evaluate it afresh and tackle what seems to be the problems of those times. I will be starting with the same view, that the ancient material belongs primarily under Smyrna and should not be extensively under Izmir. The etylomoly for Smyrna, for example, is a Smyrna-article affair and does not belong in Izmir. The Turkish form, Izmir, however, would go under Izmir. Hope this helps. Ciao for now.~~~ Botteville (talk) 00:54, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, Mr. B, looking at your evaluation again I realize that you think I just plain deleted material from Wikipedia. I did not. Check under Smyrna and if you do not find that material there let me know or put it there yourself. Also the key to making the connection is the hatnotes. "This article is about the modern city of Izmir. For the predecessor ancient city, see Smyrna." If they are not there, put them in, will you? And, you comment about how there ought to be more about education in Izmir is undoubtedly true. But, putting it in gives us all the more reason to keep the split so we can have room to put it in. Remember, the name of the game is not to find fault with botteville, which is easy to do no doubt, but to build credible articles. Right now the ball is in your court.Botteville (talk) 01:07, 27 March 2024 (UTC)