Adem Kuyumcu, founding member of Laz Culture Association, submitted an official request to the Prime Minister’s Office asking to rename places in the Balck Sea Region in their original Laz language, writes Bianet.

Aydınlar district in Siirt province has regained its Kurdish name Tillo after the government announced a series of reforms last month regarding the Kurdish issue. This prompted Turkey’s Laz people to take action to urge the government to return the names of their villages.  
“We are worried that our mother tongue is facing the danger of extinction. The return of location names will contribute to our struggle to preserve our heritage,” Kuyumcu wrote in his request.

He also attached a copy of the book “Svacoxo- Laz Yer Adları Sözlüğü” - a list of location names in the Black Sea Region originally in Laz language.
Some of the these names included:
Rize’s Pazar district: Atina
Ardeşen district: Art’aşeni (Artdaşeni)
Çamlıhemşin  district: Vija
Fındıklı district: Vitze
Artvin’s Arhavi district: Arkabi
Hopa district: Xopa (Khopa)

Kuyumcu in his letter mentioned a number of places where the Turkish version has little to do with the real nature of where they represent.
Part of Southern Caucasus Languages family, the Laz language is one of the most ancient languages of Anatolia. It is also listed as “Absolutely under danger of distinction” in UNESCO’s “Languages Under Danger” atlas.

Turkish government' policies in 1921 meant that roughly 30,280 places names were changed to Turkish from Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, Laz\ Assyrian, Arabic and Circassian. Around 12,000 were villages.
In 1940, Interior Ministry legislated the renaming of places under Law No 8589 regarding “The renaming of places with a foreign name to Turkish in order to resolve confusion issues”.
The process of "Turkishization" affected the Black Sea Region and Southeastern Region of Turkey. It also turned out that the original name of Güneysu, PM Erdoğan’s hometown, is also Potamya.