Accra’s Ghana National Mosque, built by Turkish philanthropists and inaugurated in 2021, has become more than a landmark of faith and architecture. It has also drawn attention in Ghana to something many people rarely question: which name should be used for the
At the edge of the Kanda highway in Accra, you can’t miss it. Four slender minarets rise about 65 meters into the West African sky. Around a central dome, fifty domes cascade like waves, with that main dome sitting 36 meters above the ground. The exterior is Carrara marble, and inside, hand-drawn Qur’anic calligraphy in blue and gold wraps the walls.
The building is known as the Ghana National Mosque—better described as a complex—and it is also a gift from the people of Türkiye to the people of Ghana.
But standing in front of it. watching worshippers and visitors flow around the grounds. another question presses in quietly: what do Ghanaians mean when they say “Turkey”?. What do Hausa-speaking Muslims mean when they say “Turkiyya”?. And what does Ankara mean when it insists, since 2022, that the world call the country “Türkiye”?. In Ghana, these aren’t just spellings. They point to different histories that meet in one nation.
The push for “Türkiye” is recent on paper, but long in Turkish memory. A number of news outlets reported that Turkey changed its name in 2022. but the change is framed differently by Ankara: Turks have called the country “Türkiye” since 1923. when Turkey became the successor state to the Ottoman Empire.
The campaign began in December 2021 under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. then moved into formal international territory when Türkiye’s Foreign Minister wrote to the UN Secretary-General requesting that “Türkiye” replace “Turkey. ” “Turkei. ” and “Turquie” in all international contexts. The United Nations agreed to recognize the change on 26 May 2022.
Ankara described the rebranding as a way to better represent Turkish culture abroad and to distance the country from less-flattering associations in English—associations rooted in the word “turkey” for a domesticated bird and the slang use of “turkey” to mean something foolish. The account traces this back to the 16th century. when English speakers noticed similarities between turkeys that the Aztecs had domesticated and guinea fowl. a bird imported from Africa to Europe via Ottoman trade routes.
Long before English had its own spelling. however. the name “Türkiye” had an origin story tied to the republic that Atatürk established after the Ottoman Empire lost World War I and dissolved. In 1923. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established the Republic of Turkey and adopted “Türkiye” as the official name. meaning “the land of Turks.”.
That shift is reflected far beyond government offices. Major intergovernmental organizations—Türkiye is a member of NATO. the WTO. the OECD. the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. and the African Union—have switched to the new name in their official documents. Nigeria and other officially English-speaking countries have made the change in their official communications. Ghana’s own diplomatic correspondence has similarly shifted.
For many Ghanaians, especially Hausa-speaking Muslims, none of this is surprising. They have not been using “Turkey” in the first place.
The Hausa language is spoken extensively across Ghana. including among Zongo communities in Accra. Kumasi. Tamale. and beyond. with especially strong communities in the north. These communities maintain a living tradition of Islamic learning. and the name “Turkiyya” entered the vocabulary through centuries of Arabic-medium education and scholarship—not through the British colonial schoolroom.
In the early medieval period, Hausa developed under a deep encounter with Arabic through traders and Islamic scholars. The language absorbed numerous Arabic loanwords, particularly in religious, legal, administrative, and other civic domains. “Turkiyya” is one such Arabic loanword. The term is the Arabic adjectival feminine form of “Turk,” used in classical Islamic historical writing to describe Turkic-ruled entities.
Arab scholars referenced the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt—whose ruling elite was of Turkic origin—as Dawlat at-Turkiyya. meaning the Turkish State. When the Ottomans extended their reach across North Africa and the Middle East after 1517. that term transferred naturally into Arabic scholarly discourse for the Ottoman world.
Hausa Islamic scholars learned this intellectual vocabulary through the Ajami tradition. writing Hausa in Arabic script through Qur’anic schools and through a network of learning that linked Katsina and Kano to Cairo. Mecca. and Istanbul. Long-distance commerce and pilgrimages to the holy cities carried Hausa across West. North. Central. and Northeast Africa. and with it. the word “Turkiyya.”.
Hausa has been written with an adapted version of Arabic script called Ajami since the early part of the 17th century. and early Hausa literature was often Islamic poetry or religious writing. Through that Ajami tradition. scholars absorbed and transmitted Arabic geographical and political vocabulary—including “Turkiyya”—across West Africa’s Muslim communities.
So where does “Turkey” come in?. The English name arrived through a different route entirely: British colonial administration, missionary education, and the English-language press. When Ghana’s schools ran under colonial curricula. geography textbooks written in London referred to the country across the Mediterranean and beyond as “Turkey.” Radio broadcasters used that name. Newspapers printed it. Civil servants recorded it in official correspondence.
The difference. in this telling. is not whether the English word is “wrong.” It’s that “Turkey” is an exonym—how one language names another. The article points out that French use “Turquie. ” medieval Latin used “Turchia. ” and even the color turquoise was named after Turkey by the French due to the color of its coastal seas. In the same way, European colonial powers delivered their own exonyms to African territories. For Anglophone Ghana, the exonym was “Turkey.”.
But for Ghana’s Muslim communities rooted in Arabic-medium learning, “Turkey” has always been the foreign imposition. “Turkiyya” was the home name, carried across the Sahara by scholars, merchants, and pilgrims who had been in dialogue with the Turkic world for centuries before European contact.
That naming question matters in Ghana today partly because Ghana and Türkiye are not distant acquaintances. Diplomatic relations were established in 1958 after Ghana’s independence.
The Turkish Embassy in Accra opened in 1964, closed in 1981 due to austerity measures, and reopened on 1 February 2010. The Embassy of the Republic of Ghana opened in Ankara in 2012.
Türkiye’s diplomatic presence in Accra is described as one of the first Turkish diplomatic missions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ghana is also listed among Türkiye’s top five business partners in sub-Saharan Africa.
Presidential visits have underlined the relationship. including President Abdullah Gül’s visit to Ghana in March 2011. President John Dramani Mahama’s reciprocal visit to Türkiye in January 2013. and President Erdoğan’s visit to Ghana from 29 February to 1 March 2016. During that 2016 visit, a business forum brought together approximately 150 Turkish businessmen with their Ghanaian counterparts.
Trade is framed as steadily expanding. Ghana’s exports to Türkiye are described as primarily primary goods: gold, cocoa beans, cocoa paste, and cocoa butter. The annual trade volume is projected to reach US$900 million by the close of 2025 and cross US$1 billion by 2027.
Beyond commerce, the relationship is also told through cultural and humanitarian actions. Turkish aid bodies constructed primary schools in Ghana’s Wa and Kumasi regions, dug wells, and distributed packages of basic goods to communities in need.
Türkiye also regularly announces scholarships for qualified Ghanaian applicants at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels through the Türkiye Scholarships programme.
And then there is the mosque—because it is difficult to see it as only symbolism.
The Ghana National Mosque Complex was inaugurated on 16 July 2021. It is described as a gift from Turkish philanthropists to the Ghanaian Muslim community. The $10 million. 15. 000-seater mosque was built by the Turkish Hudai Foundation in Accra. with support from the Turkish government. on 40-acre land at Kanda.
The facility includes not only the Grand National Mosque, but also a recreational centre, a library complex, offices and residence for the Chief Imam, a research complex, a Senior High School complex, a clinic, an administration block, an auditorium, and a conference centre.
The architect Erdoğan Çetinkaya’s design was influenced by the Blue Mosque in Istanbul—the Sultan Ahmet Mosque—as well as the Selimiye Mosque. The structure uses 4,000 cubic meters of concrete and 700 tons of steel. The 50 domes are described as appearing almost weightless in an Ottoman architectural tradition. with the main dome at 36 meters. supported by four columns at 20-metre intervals.
At the inauguration ceremony, President Nana Akufo-Addo said Ghana is a Christian-majority country and that seeing a symbol of Islam adorn the landscape of the capital demonstrated the religious harmony Ghana maintains, which he described as the envy of the rest of the world.
In that physical setting—Ottoman in form. Ghanaian in location. funded by Turkish philanthropists—the mosque becomes a metaphor for something larger than diplomacy. Ankara may argue for “Türkiye” in global documents, but Ghana has its own older vocabulary. A Zongo elder in Nima. the account says. speaks “Turkiyya” and is not mispronouncing “Turkey.” In this view. he is using a name with older historical roots.
Postcolonial Africa has seen similar exonym corrections, the text notes, including the shift from Zaire to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and from Rhodesia, named for British colonizer Cecil Rhodes, to Zimbabwe—examples of countries reclaiming their names from colonial imposition.
For Ghana’s media. educators. and policymakers. the argument in the piece is that the moment is ripe for a transition. Official documents have already moved to “Türkiye. ” and the text calls for newsrooms. schools. and public discourse to follow—not just out of diplomatic courtesy. but out of fidelity to Ghana’s own Islamic intellectual heritage.
The picture it leaves you with is immediate. A student in Tamale says “Turkiyya.” A diplomat in Accra files a report on “Türkiye.” A market woman in Kumasi references “Turkey.” Without knowing it, each is stepping into one of the longest-running naming debates in world history.
Now that the United Nations has settled the matter formally, Ghana is cast as a country with historical, linguistic, diplomatic, and cultural reasons to lead West Africa in saying the name right.
Accra Ghana National Mosque Türkiye Turkey name change Turkiyya UN recognition 2022 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Hausa Zongo communities Islamic learning diplomacy Ghana-Türkiye