Turkish Lira

Overview

The Turkish Lira is the official currency of Turkey. It is subdivided into 100 kurus. All the notes and coins have portraits on the obverse side of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at different points of his life since the 1930s. The Central Bank of Turkey is holding a contest to find a new currency sign.

Economy

• Turkey has a well-developed economy. It is among the world’s leading producers of agricultural products, textiles, motor vehicles, ships and other transportation equipment, construction materials, consumer electronics, and home appliances.
• In recent years, Turkey’s private sector has been growing rapidly, but the state still plays a major role in industry, banking, communications, and transport.
• Turkey has the world’s 15th largest GDP-PPP and the 17th largest nominal GDP. The country is a founding member of the OECD (1961) and is one of the G20 major economies (1999).
• The World Bank classifies Turkey as an upper-middle income country in terms of its per capita GDP in the year 2007. According to a survey by Forbes magazine, Istanbul, Turkey’s financial capital, had a total of 28 billionaires as of March 2010 (down from 35 in 2008), which ranks it 4th in the world behind New York City (60 billionaires), Moscow (50 billionaires), and London (32 billionaires).
• Turkey has had high inflation rates compared to other developed countries, but has never experienced hyperinflation.

History

• Because of chronic inflation in Turkey from the 1970s to the 1990s, the Lira depreciated greatly in value.
• In the last few years, the Turkish Lira has stabilized and even risen against the US Dollar and the Euro.
• The Lira had slid in value to such an extent that, before the 2005 revaluation, one original gold Lira coin was worth approximately 120,000,000 Lira.