A Personal Look at Turkish Inflation

A personal account of inflation a la Turka, 2022 to 2024

I haven’t posted in almost a month.

Part of the reason was a trip — an adventure — to a place that wasn’t Turkey.

I went to India with my daughter, Ellie.

When I returned, I had the matter of my old house to deal with. A new house to find and then move in to. All of the stress. It left little time to write and post accounts of my adventures.

The 1st Apartment

When I moved to Turkey in August of 2022, I found an apartment right away: a two-bedroom apartment within walking distance of my school in the suburb of Gaziemir. The price was 4,500 lira, which at the time was $250 (18TL or ₺/$1). I signed a one-year contract.

For the next year, all I heard about was inflation. Friends’ rents were soaring, despite a law that limited rental increases to 25% — a law few landlords thought applied to yabanci (foreign) tenants. I waited until the end of my contract in July, and I offered my landlord an increase to $300 in USD not lira, hoping the more stable currency would sway him. Instead, he asked for 12,500₺, almost 3 times the current rent. Even at the then-26₺/$1 exchange rate, $480 was double the rent.

I agreed to move out. The apartment had no air-conditioning, and I had sweltered all summer. I determined to find a better deal.

Currencies. Here’s the dollar’s five-year rise against the lira, with the date of my arrival here marked out. By the time I reach the end of my 2nd year, the lira will be worth half the value it held when I arrived, 18/1. My school pays me in dollars, but there is inflation to account for…. Source: Google.

The 2nd Apartment

I found an apartment for 10,000₺: double in lira the rent I had paid the previous year, about $385 at the time I signed the contract. It was in a different part of town, a village near Inciralti, close to the bay. It had 3 bedrooms, one more than my first place. In America we would call the place a “fixer-upper”, but I felt confident I could make a go of it.

I have written previously about the Turkish toilet it had when I moved in and how the landlord allowed me to replace the toilet with a normal one (at my own expense). It had an extra room, too, and I hoped to recoup the investment by renting out the bed.

Then the rains began in November. The apartment had no heating system (which I had known when I moved in). What I hadn’t expected was the water that seeped into all the rooms from a leaky roof. By the end of the month, I moved into the living room, which had a heat pump, and slept on the couch. I stayed there until March 8, when I moved.

This is a blog about inflation, not my bad choices in real estate, so I will leave the sob story there. I had grounds to leave, but I had to find a new place. The high inflation (and the falling lira) meant that an apartment I rented this month might cost thousands more in four months’ time if I didn’t act fast.

Inflation. Here’s a look at the monthly year-over-year inflation rates over the last calendar year. You see that February (the last column) had above 65% inflation. That tracks with the 70% higher rental rate I’m paying over last year (that’s 40% higher in $ terms). US prices had increased 3.2% during that same timeframe.

The 3rd Apartment

Ten days ago I signed a contract on my 3rd apartment in Balcova, a city on a hill overlooking the Bay of Izmir. The rent is 17,000₺ a month. With the dollar now at 30/1, I’m paying $530 a month. It’s a basement apartment close to a university. Nice. Comfortable.

When I went to sign the new contract, the realtor had added an interesting clause that I hadn’t seen before.

It read, Enflasyon.

I knew the translation. I didn’t know what it meant.

“It is for the next contract,” she told me with a smile. “We will use enflasyon to determine the price.”

After experiencing first-hand the vagaries of runaway inflation and balancing them with a plunging exchange rate, I’ll be happy to negotiate the next contract on those terms.

After three moves in 20 months, I’d like to stay here awhile.

As of January 2024, Turkey’s inflation rate placed it among these top-five countries in the world.

The Breakdown

Here’s a look at how my rent has gone up in each of these three moves. (And before I go on, I should add that my school supports me with a housing allowance that has also increased every year, albeit not always enough to cover my full rental expense.)

The increase rows show the inflation in this one price over year 1 (Y1) and year 2 (Y2) of my time in Turkey.

I’m really happy to be here. Lucky to be here, in fact. But Turkey isn’t just soft, clear Aegean waters and marble Roman monuments. A price must be paid here — and that price is going up and up and up!

In whatever country you’re reading this, you know about inflation. You have experienced it.

I hope this post gives you some perspective.

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It’s hiking season, and I have some really cool adventures coming up. They include

• a trip to a ghost town, emptied of Greek residents during the population exchange of 2023, street after street of empty stone houses

• a return to Sardis and a hike up to the acropolis

• a return to Pergamum, which I haven’t featured here yet

• a celebration of Artemis’s birthday at her temple in Ephesus, and

• a return to Ephesus to celebrate the Feast of St. John with Christians from around the region. Read my account of last year’s visit.

A new Aegean Tale will post in the coming days, too: “The Holly of the Aegean.”