And “polish” and “Polish” are not even pronounced the same.

They might be at the beginning of a sentence (depends on the reason for capitalization).

It’s more like identifier reuse, on a case insensitive “system”.

“John” isn’t the same as “John” if I’m talking about two separate Johns.

Yet "TURKEY" is not a separate word from "Turkey" and "turkey". Ultimately context disambiguates these words, not capitalization.