I created a country in Alliance and noted I had full turns to play and stored. I then wanted to switch my country name to an older country name I used to use. I went into Preferences and deleted the country and created a new one with my desired country name. That new country had 0 turns to play and 0 stored.

Feels like a bug. If intentional, it is quite punitive.

You deleted and started fresh, so everything is lost.

There is a "Rename Country" option on the main page when you're in protection, but I think you can only do that if you use premium.

Logically, it makes sense, intuitively, it makes little sense. Please consider my punitive commentary in original post.

I don't disagree with you, just wanted to provide some additional context.