WHEN Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged his supporters in December 2016 to defend their currency, the lira, by selling their dollars, euros and gold, scores of them answered the call. In Konya, a city in Turkey’s conservative heartland and a reservoir of votes for Mr Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AK) party, some locals outdid themselves. A district mayor gave a week off to municipal workers who sold more than $500, a carpet dealer handed out free rugs to customers who exchanged more than $2,000, and a surgeon offered free horse rides to anyone who showed up with a receipt from a currency-exchange office. Similar campaigns sprouted up elsewhere. Within a week, people across the country had converted more than $440m to liras.
They may now regret it. In dollar terms, those who followed Mr Erdogan’s advice 18 months ago have lost a quarter of their cash. But the collapse of the lira, which has lost a third of its value against the dollar since the start of emergency…Continue reading
Source: The Economist – Europe
Surrender your dollars, urges Turkey’s President Erdogan