Quadrillions of lira is the currency of Erdoganian politics
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn’t think his generosity toward the Turkish people can be measured in today’s lira alone.
As Erdogan hit the campaign trail ahead of municipal elections next month, he touted some eye-watering amounts invested around the country by successive governments run by his AK Party in the past 16 years: 35 quadrillion liras plowed into the province of Gaziantep, 40 quadrillion liras for Antalya and 23.5 quadrillion liras in the Erzurum region.
The largesse isn’t exactly a wild exaggeration — except the numbers are given in old lira, conveniently ignoring a decision made under Erdogan’s watch in 2005 to knock six zeros off the currency. The spending on Antalya, one of Turkey’s 10 largest cities, amounts to 40 billion in there de nominate drill ion is 1 followed by 15 zeros.)
“If the figures were uttered in the correct way, they would seem low,” said Emin Karagozoglu, an economist at Bilkent University in Ankara.
For all the showmanship, modern Turkey’s longest-serving ruler has indeed pumped plenty of fiscal stimulus into the Middle East’s biggest economy, presiding over years of supercharged credit growth that ended in a currency crash last summer. When Erdogan shifts to campaignspeak — before local, parliamentary or presidential ballots — he trots out the quadrillions spent.
Turkey redenominated the lira in the aftermath of the country’s 2001 economic crisis, when inflation climbed to as much as 73 per cent.
Erdogan, who first became prime minister in 2003, also takes pride in overhauling the lira, saying his government “saved the honour of the currency” after a period when people had to pay 1 million liras to use a public toilet. But the lira has been very unstable in the last few months.
Making references to old lira is still widespread in common speech and is also used by Erdogan’s opponents. In October, for example, the main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, complained that the government paid 692 quadrillion liras in interest on its borrowings in the past 14 years.
“Many people are yet to adapt to the correct use,” Karagozoglu said.