[OSM-talk] can the Northern Cyprus editor contact me please?

[David Janda]

Hello Mikel and list

I did reply to your original email to me, but obviously something did not
work, so here goes again.

I did, as agreed use name A/B as you suggested (as well as other tags),
where A is the Turkish name and B the Greek. This lasted a few hours as they
were overwritten to B/A and the remainder of the tags deleted and altered.
My rational for using Turkish / Greek in that order is that the Turkish
names are, and have been in use for the past 30 years. Whereas the Greek
ones are not used here in the north at all. My data set for each place name
is:

k='is_in:en' v='Turkish Republic Of Northern Cyprus'
k='name:en' v='Ozankoy'
k='name' v='Ozanköy'
k='name:tr' v='Ozanköy'
k='is_in' v='Kuzy Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti'
k='place' v='village'
k='is_in:el' v='Cyprus'
k='old_name' v='Kazaphani'
k='name:el' v='Kazaphani'

Before I continue, I should explain my rational here. I believe that OSM
should present a snapshot of the state of play at the time a mapper maps an
area. Period. Politics to one side and all of that. After all, OSM is used
as a navigational aid. Of course, the Greeks want to use the Greek names and
cite that the names are not recognised, which in fact is NOT the truth. The
state of Northern Cyprus is not recognised, but there is nothing I have seen
that states that the names are not. But, back to their point and here I
refer to a technical document someone on the list quoted which said that in
cases such as this technology should be used to solve the problem - hence my
data set, which as you can see provides names in Turkish, English, the Greek
name of the village as well as historical reference with old_name having the
Greek name. As far as I can see it's now down to the client software!

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/9th-UNCSGN-Docs/E-CONF-98-30-Add1.pdf

I do not believe that name: should be used as a historical (we have
old_name) or political tag at all, but if it makes someone happy then I will
use A / B where A is the Turkish name. Is that acceptable?

I agree that the database cannot and should not be used to carry out a
disagreement.

Anyway, just to put another point across here, I observe, with great
interest that none of the place names in the Republic of Cyprus have the
Turkish names in any of their tags.

David Janda