The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Head of the Turkish Central Bank Durmuş Yılmaz unveiled new Turkish Lira bank notes to the press and public yesterday in Ankara, Turkey. The notes will feature a new range of Turkish prominent people.

The new bank notes will be introduced on 1 January 2009 when Turkey marks the return to designating its currency as the Turkish Lira (TL) rather than the new Turkish Lira (YTL).

In a surprise move, and harking back to the days of hyper inflation in Turkey, a new 200TL note will be issued to complement the 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100TL notes. At today’s exchange rates a 200TL note would be worth 87 GBP, 110 Euro or 153 USD. It will be interesting how the new 200 TL note can be used on a day to day basis when currently trying to get change out of a 50 note can be difficult.

The new bank notes will include a range of new security measures as well as being different sizes and designs to the current bank notes. www.fethiyetimes.com will bring you images of these notes and the new coins when they are published by the central bank.

The current Yeni Turk Lirasi (YTL) notes and coins (Kurus) will continue to be used together with the new notes and coins for 1 year, but banks will be collecting the ‘old’ money to slowly work it out of the system. After 1st January 2010 only the Ziraat Bank and the Turkish Central Bank will be authorised to change the ‘old’ money for new.