I am always fascinated by the money of other countries. Here’s a bit about the money here, known as the Turkish Lira.

The Turkish Lira (TL) comes in paper notes (100, 50, 20, 10 and 5 TL most commonly) and coins (1TL and then 50, 25, 10 and 5 kurus or cents most commonly). One US Dollar is worth about 5.7 TL as of today. That means the paper notes are worth about $17.5, $8.76, $3.50, $1.75, and $0.88 each and the coins are worth about $0.18, $0.09, $0.04, $0.02, and $0.01.  Certain internet sites (but not all) say there are 1TL notes, 1 kurus coins and 200 TL notes, but I have yet to see them.

Prior to 2005, money in Turkey had much bigger numbers! A meal could cost several MILLION lira! Eventually the numbers got so large they dropped 6 zeros from every number! Saying 1 TL is much easier than saying 1 Million TL!  Then in 2009, they changed the appearance of the money again, but kept the values.

The front of all TL notes and coins have Mustafa Kamel Ataturk on it, the founder and first President of Turkey.