WHEN Turkey's President Recep Tay-yip Erdogan urged his supporters in December 2016 to defend their currency, the lira, by selling their dollars, euros and gold, scores of them answered the call. In Konya, a city in Turkey's conservative heartland and a reservoir of votes for Mr Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AK) party, some locals outdid themselves. A district mayor gave a week off to municipal workers who sold more than $500, a carpet dealer handed out free rugs to customers who exchanged more than $2,000, and a surgeon offered free horse rides to anyone who showed up with a receipt from a currency-exchange office. Similar campaigns sprouted up elsewhere. Within a week, people across the country had converted more than $440m to liras.
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