Turkish Government Launches Ad Campaign To Strengthen Lira

The Turkish government has unveiled a new strategy to stabilize its wobbly economy: an advertising campaign designed to encourage people to convert their savings from U.S. dollars to the lira, the national currency.

What Happened: Bloomberg reported the new campaign debuted on Sunday on Turkish national television and social media.

The initial advertisement in the campaign praises the dedication the Turkish people put into their work and advocates that they invest their savings into a recently introduced time-deposit product designed to offer protection from currency depreciation.

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Why It Happened: The time-deposit product was introduced last month by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan but is only slowly gaining favor with a Turkish population that has been struggling with economic uncertainty.

The Financial Times reported that $14 billion has been transferred into these products as of Jan. 24; the country’s total banking sector deposits is $402 trillion.

The Turkish lira lost 44% of its value against the U.S. dollar during 2021, with many global economists blaming the plummet on Erdogan’s insistence that the central bank cut rates four times last year despite rising inflation. At the moment, the lira’s descent seems to have been buffered. Since the beginning of January it has only been down by 2% against the dollar.

Photo: Max Pixel.