One Turkish coffee, medium-sweet? That'll be two million lira, please. Visitors to Turkey are often perplexed by the plethora of zeros that confronts them at every financial turn. Even Turks themselves get a little tired of being nominal millionaires. A new pair of shoes? One hundred million. A new washing machine? One billion five hundred and thirty million. Wait till you buy a car - or a house. But from January 1 all that will change when Turkey's central bank lops six zeros off the currency, creating the New Turkish Lira at the rate of one to a million of the current units.
"It'll be much easier," said currency trader Emre Keles, sitting in the cramped back room of his foreign exchange bureau on the edge of Istanbul's historic Grand Bazaar.
"Lots of zeros, lots of calculations. Fewer zeros, fewer calculations. It's good for us, good for business."
Turkey boasts the world's highest denomination current banknote, for 20 million lira - worth about $14. The smallest coin in routine use is 50,000 lira, or just over three cents.
Three decades of rampant inflation have eaten away the currency's value, leaving Turks juggling with transactions in millions, billions and even trillions of lira. National economic indicators run into "quadrillions" of 16 digits or more.
Even quite routine sums need a wider than average calculator screen. Bank cash machines have an extra key for three zeros, saving customers the trouble of multiple prodding.
To make matters more confusing, menus sometimes simply drop the last three zeros, while badly punctuated price labels often force buyers to count backwards in threes from the end of the number to make sense of the blizzard of digits.
One British holidaymaker loaded up on champagne in a smart bar at one of Turkey's up-market yachting resorts, delighted to find it cost the equivalent of only $43 a bottle. When the bill came she found she was wrong. It was $430 a bottle.
"It's too many zeros, even for cheap things," said Erhan Ozler, who runs a textile store in the Grand Bazaar. "I tell the tourists something costs 15 million and they say I must be joking. Or I say it's 20 million and they give me 200 million."
Practicality is just one reason for the change. It's also a question of national pride.
Dogged by years of economic and political instability, since 2001 Turkey has dragged itself out of deep recession with the help of a $19 billion International Monetary Fund loan deal.
Economic growth this year is close to 10 percent and inflation, running at an annual 70 percent in early 2002, is around single digits for the first time in a generation.
With a recent new IMF deal and the prospect next year of European Union entry talks, Turkey wants to make sure investors get the message that its economy is finally on an even keel.
"The transition to the New Turkish Lira is a historic turning point in restoring the prestige of our currency and our country in the international arena," central bank chief Sureyya Serdengecti told reporters earlier this year.
"The European lira" boasted the Sabah daily when images of the new notes and coins were first released. "Finally the Turkish currency will be as respected as Western currencies."
It is far from the first time a country has dispensed with excess noughts - some 50 countries have done so since Germany in 1923. The exercise has not always gone well, with some currencies tumbling again almost as soon as the zeros came off.
But analysts say Turkey's decision to re-denominate when the economy has already steadied, rather than using it as a crisis measure, gives it a good chance of success.
The new lira, or Yeni Turk Lirasi (YTL) in Turkish, will be divided into 100 kurus, a unit that has been defunct since the 1970s. Two extra banknotes will appear, for 50 and 100 new lira.
The other new notes will look just the same as their existing equivalents, minus six zeros. Both old and new lira will be legal tender throughout 2005 and prices will have to be displayed in both, as many businesses are already doing.
The change is simple compared to shifts such as Britain's adoption of decimal currency in 1971 or the euro's street debut in 2002, as there is no complex conversion to be done.
Already in colloquial speech Turks often drop the word "million", saying "one and a half" rather than "1,500,000 lira".
"It's effectively what we do already," said one senior Turkish accountant. "It's mostly psychological. It's a simple thing but any change can be difficult for people, especially the old."
Many consumers worry that vendors will round prices upwards in the new lira. But analysts say this rounding effect, which caused bitter complaints in some euro zone countries, should be minimal as prices will not be recalculated, just truncated.
Others are nervous about fumbling for the new cash.
"What if you're in a dolmus (minibus) and you pay in new lira and get the change in the old money?" said a Turkish journalist. "Will you know if it's right?"
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