Turkey is Sustaining Major Inflation. Something Has to Give.

November 02, 2023

by Doug French Mises.org

Bloomberg reports that price inflation in Turkey was more than 60 percent in September. The 61.5 percent reading was released by the Turkish government’s statistical office. Being on the ground in Turkey for Hans-Hermann and Gülçin Hoppe’s Property and Freedom Society meeting, I can say the vibe was not hyperinflationary. The shelves are not empty and the port city of Bodrum is booming. Professor Hoppe told the crowd Bodrum has grown from a population of fifty thousand to a million for the whole peninsula. No matter the destruction to the Turkish lira, money keeps pouring into peninsula real estate, watercraft, and businesses.

“According to statistics by the Turkish Statistical Institute, the average property price in Bodrum in 2021 was around $490 per square foot,” wrote Spencer Elliott for Forbes this past summer. “Over the last decade, property values have increased dramatically, with the total valuation of the real estate transactions in Bodrum rising from $892 million in 2010 to over $2.1 billion in 2020.”