Finance & Business

What is the Turkish Lira? The Turkish Lira is the legal tender of Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. This legal tender known as the Turkish Lira is subcategorized into one hundred kurus. The symbol for this legal tender is TL and the three letter ISO 4217 currency code is TRY. The first lira was introduced to the nation back in 1844. The Turkish Lira has suffered from chronic inflation rates. According to the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, it is estimated that the Turkish Lira suffers from a 10.61% inflation rate. In the 1960’s the Turkish Lira had an average inflation rate of 38% a year. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan referred to this issue as a “national shame.”

The Turkish Lira has become more stabilized over the years. In 1966 one United States dollar equaled 9 lira. During 1980, one United States Dollar was equal to 90 lira. In 1988, one United States dollar was equal to 1,300 lira. In 1996, one United States dollar was the equivalent of 107,000 lira. When compared in 2001, one United States dollar was comparable to 1,650,000 lira. However, in 2007 one United States Dollar was equal to 1,260,000 of the old Turkish lira and 1.26 in new Turkish lira. This amount changed again in 2008, when one United States dollar was determined to be comparable to 1,550,000 of the old Turkish lira and 1.55 of new Turkish lira.

In December of 2003, a law was passed regarding the Turkish lira. This law was passed in December of 2003 and was passed by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The passing of the law allowed the elimination of six zeroes from the Turkish lira, and the formation of a new legal tender. This legal bread was debuted on January 1st, 2005 and replaced the previous Turkish lira at an exchange rate of one second lira being the equivalent of 1,000,000 first Turkish liras. This second Turkish lira was officially called the New Turkish Lira and was abbreviated as YTL with the “Y” standing for “Yeni” which means “new.” The currency was subcategorized into 100 new kurus. However, as of January 1st, 2009 the “new” was removed from the title of the Turkish lira and the abbreviation for the legal tender was reverted back to TL.

As of today, the coin and paper form of the legal tender of Turkish lira is simply referred to as Turkish lira. The coin has lost the new from its title as well, and as of January 1st, 2009 new coins became introduced and began circulation that no longer displayed the word new on the coin. These coins were introduced to the legal tender in one, five, ten, twenty five, and fifty kurus, as well as in the one lira coin. The paper form of the Turkish lira comes in denominations of five, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, and two hundred liras. The legal tender is produced in different sizes to prevent forgery.