Turkey devalues the lira

Visitors to Turkey will no longer have to grapple with the challenge of dealing with millions of lira, following a major devaluation of the country’s currency. Until the turn of the year, Turkey had the world’s largest denomination banknotes, with a million lira being worth 40p and the biggest note – worth 20,000,000 lira – equating to just GBP8. According to The Independent, the “cascading zeros have long been seen as a source of national shame”; the newspaper highlights the fact that the Turkish equivalent of Who Wants to be a Millionaire had to be called Who Would Like 500 Billion?” The Independent quotes the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as saying: “We are happy to reinstate the dignity of the Turkish lira.” Report by Tim Gillett, News From Abroad Ltd