WooCommerce

Hi WooCommerce Team,

I would like to report an issue regarding the sorting of Turkiye’s states (provinces) in the checkout and address forms, and propose a solution.

Current Behavior:
Currently, the provinces of Turkiye are listed based on their license plate codes (which act as the keys in the array, from 01 to 81). While the first 67 provinces were ordered alphabetically when the system was established, the provinces created after 1989 (from 68 to 81, such as Batman, Aksaray, Şırnak, etc.) were added to the end of the list. As a result, a user looking for “Batman” cannot find it under the letter “B”; they have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list. This creates a poor user experience and confusion for customers.

Requested Change:
We request that the Turkiye states list be sorted alphabetically by their display names rather than their array keys (plate codes).

Important Technical Note:
While sorting alphabetically, it is crucial that the existing keys (the 2-digit plate/ISO codes like ‘TR72′ or ’72’ for Batman) remain unchanged and accurately mapped to their respective provinces. Changing the keys would break existing orders, database entries, and shipping zone integrations.

The sorting should be handled using a locale-aware sorting function (like asort() or Collator with tr_TR locale) to ensure Turkish characters (Ç, Ğ, İ, Ö, Ş, Ü) are sorted correctly.

Thank you for your time and support.

Best regards,
Selçuk Göktekin