Why did Kızılçullu become Şirinyer?

It is obvious that in the past in Turkey, the names of many settlements in Anatolia were changed in order to translate place names into Turkish. Thousands of settlements, especially Kurdish, Zazaki, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian and Laz, have lost their names spoken by their local people for centuries, and until today, the old names of very few of them have been restored.

Until today, different claims have been made about why the name of today's Şirinyer district, which is called Kızılçullu by the Turks and Paradis/Paradiso (paradise) by non-Muslims, probably due to the abundance of water in the past, was changed. Kızılçullu is already a Turkish name and the Turkish-speaking population was in the majority in the region. So why was such a change made?

The reason for this goes back to the time when the world was bipolar, that is, the Cold War. In the early 1950s, when the Cold War was at its most intense, it was decided to close the Kızılçullu Village Institute. In 1953, campus buildings were transferred to NATO. The college campus, opened by the Americans in 1912, was thus handed over to a military unit dominated by America for another purpose. The name of the Kızılçullu neighborhood, where the campus is located, reminded some of communism, and obviously there were certain groups who were disturbed by this situation. However, the name Kızılçullu was perhaps a name used for centuries.

The view of Kızılçullu from the top of a hillThere is no evidence that the Americans wanted Kızılçullu's name to be changed. However, Mehmet Emin Elmacı states in his book "One district, one building: NATO building" that some citizens officially petitioned the Democratic Party for a name change. The petition is as follows:

''Although we, in principle, do not have any complaints about living in Kızılçullu, the word (kızıl) has been annoying us since the first day. We are also deeply saddened by the fact that the dictatorship (red regime), which has never been incompatible with our national dignity and integrity and has always set its sights on our integrity throughout history, has become a name in the Aegean and there has been no tendency to change it until today. In this regard, we kindly request your valuable advice that the name Kızılçullu, which is unknown where it was coined for our village, should be removed and replaced with the name "Yenişehir" or "Yeşilköy", which we find more appropriate, as two inappropriate words such as "kızıl" and "çul" come together. We do.''

As can be understood from the petition, Kızılçullu's name was changed for political reasons. The name of Kızılçullu neighborhood in Buca was officially changed to "Şirinyer" on January 10, 1955.

Source: atalarimizintopraklari.com