Turkey’s annual inflation rate has soared to a 19-year high, underlining the country’s financial turmoil and alarm over its president’s policies, the BBC reports.
Prices hit more than 36% December as the cost of transport, food and other staples ate into household budgets.
Most central banks raise interest rates to help cool inflation but Turkey has gone the other way.
It has meant a collapse in the value of the lira, as Tayyip Erdogan prioritises exports over currency stability.
The lira shed 44% of its value against the dollar last year, and fell another 4% on Monday.
Mr Erdogan has described interest rates as “the mother and father of all evil,” and has used more unorthodox policy to try to dampen prices including intervening in foreign exchange markets.
