Surname Law (Turkey)

Turkey's Surname Law, adopted on June 21, 1934, required every citizen of the Turkish Republic to adopt a fixed, hereditary surname for the first time, replacing a system in which surnames had been optional. Surnames had to be in Turkish and could not refer to military rank, foreign nationality or ethnicity, or tribal affiliation, and endings associated with Armenian, Greek, Slavic, Persian, and other non-Turkish minority naming conventions were also barred. Presented as one of the closing measures of Ataturk's modernizing reforms, the law is also recognized by historians as an instrument of Turkification that pressured Armenian, Greek, Jewish, Assyrian, Kurdish, and other minority citizens to give up or alter their family names.