Turkish new lira

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The Turkish new lira is the current currency of Turkey and de facto state Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Introduced on 1 January 2005, it is equivalent to 1,000,000 Turkish old lira (which remained valid until the end of 2005) and divided into 100 new kuruş.

1 Currency specification
2 Design
3 History
4 Current TRY exchange rates
5 External links

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Currency specification

Symbol: YTL (Yeni Türk Lirası), The ISO 4217 code of Turkish new lira is "TRY".
Banknotes: 100, 50, 20, 10, 5 and 1 YTL
Coins: 1 YTL and 50, 25, 10, 5, and 1 new kuruş

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Design

Same banknote and coin designs are shared with the Turkish old lira, to prevent any confusion.

All notes and coins show portraits of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from different points of his life, and images of various historical and otherwise important buildings and places in Turkey.

The design of the 50 kuruş and 1 lira coins, to the dismay of the European Central Bank, clearly resembles that of the €1 and €2 coins respectively. This could cause confusion in the eurozone. Also, it caused trouble to businesses using vending machines (particularly at airports) in the eurozone since a number of vending machines at the time accepted the 1 lira coin as a €2 coin. Since €2 is worth roughly 3-4 times more, vending machines affected had to be upgraded at the expense of their owners.

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History

Owing to the chronic inflation experienced in Turkey from the 1970s through to the 1990s, the Turkish lira experienced severe depreciation in value. Turkey has had high inflation rates compared to developed countries but has never suffered hyperinflation. From an average of 9 lira per U.S. dollar in the late 1960s, the currency came to trade at approximately 1.65 million lira per U.S. dollar in late 2001. This represented an average inflation of about 38% per year. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had called this problem a "national shame". In late December 2003, the Turkish Parliament passed a law which allowed for the removal of six zeroes from the currency, and the creation of the Turkish new lira.

Conversion rates on January 1, 2005:

USD 1.00 = TRL 1,325,700 = TRY 1.3257
EUR 1.00 = TRL 1,798,179 = TRY 1.79818
GBP 1.00 = TRL 2,563,061 = TRY 2.56306
CAD 1.00 = TRL 1,114,653 = TRY 1.11465
TRY 1.00 = USD 0.75432
TRY 1.00 = EUR 0.55612
TRY 1.00 = GBP 0.39040
TRY 1.00 = CAD 0.89714

The introduction of the Turkish new lira has been accompanied by two new banknotes which did not have equivalents in the old system: TRY 100 and TRY 50.

With the revaluation of the Turkish old lira, the Romanian leu (also revalued in July 2005) briefly became the world's least valued currency unit.

In the past, other countries have also revalued their currency. A similar case to the Turkish is the Peruvian nuevo sol ("new sun"), that replaced in 1991 one million inti ("sun" in Quechua); the inti itself had replaced the sol de oro ("golden sun") in 1985 at a rate of 1000 to 1. The French franc was revalued by a factor of 100 in January 1960. The Finnish markka was also revalued by a factor of 100 in 1963. Argentina has had many different versions of its peso since the early 1970s. Currencies have also been revalued when pegged to a new standard or currency basket; for example, India revalued the rupee from a system pegged to the pound sterling to a gold standard in 1966.