The Turkish lira has crashed as much as 7 per cent in just a few minutes to a new record near 15 to the dollar, gripped by worries over President Tayyip Erdogan’s risky new economic policy and prospects of another interest rate cut.
The sudden slide left the currency with half the value that it had at the end of last year, fuelling inflation in a big emerging market economy which depends heavily on imports.
The central bank had previously kept the lira below the 14.0 level, intervening in the foreign exchange market three times in the last two weeks by selling dollars.