You say Lira I say Yuan

Turkey's ties with China have been complicated at times because of Beijing's heavy-handed approach to unrest in Xinjiang, home to China's Muslim Turkic minority of Uighurs.
Mavi Boncuk |

Turkey and China will use their currencies, the lira[1] and the yuan[2], in bilateral relations Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday after holding talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Both members of the G20 group of rich and developing countries, Turkey and China have two of the fastest growing big economies in the world. Inward-looking just a few decades ago, they are now looking to boost their global influence to reflect their economic muscle.

[1] The lira was introduced in 1844. It replaced the kuruş as the principal unit of currency, with the kuruş continuing to circulate as a subdivision of the lira, with 100 kuruş = 1 lira. The para also continued to be used, with 40 para = 1 kuruş. Until the 1930s, the Arabic script was used on Turkish coins and banknotes. Kuruş (derived from the German Groschen; Ottoman Turkish: غروش gurûş) is a Turkish currency subunit. Since 2005, one new Turkish lira is equal to 100 kuruş. The kuruş was also the standard unit of currency in the Ottoman Empire until 1844, and from that date until the late 1970s was a subdivision of the former lira. It was subdivided into 40 para (پاره), each of 3 akçe. In European languages, the kuruş was often referred to as the piastre, derived from the Italian word piastra. Kuruş eventually became obsolete due to the chronic inflation in Turkey in the late 1970s. A currency reform on 1 January 2005, provided its return as the 1/100th of the new lira.

See also: Ottoman Coins

[2] Yuan in Chinese literally means a "round object" or "round coin". During the Qing Dynasty, the yuan was a round and silver coin. The yuan is the base unit of a number of modern Chinese currencies. The distinction between yuan and renminbi is analogous to that between the pound and sterling; the pound (yuan) is the unit of account while sterling (renminbi) is the actual currency. The yuan was introduced in 1889 at par with the Mexican peso, a silver coin deriving from the Spanish dollar which circulated widely in South East Asia since the 17th century due to Spanish presence in the region, namely Philippines and Guam.