From the Price Revolution to the Republic: A Comparative Historical Reading of Inflation Experiences in Turkish Economic History

Öz

This article develops a comparative historical reading of inflation episodes across Turkish economic history, connecting recent economic-historical scholarship on early-modern price instability with the well-documented inflationary trajectory of the Turkish Republic from the 1980s liberalization period through the disinflation process of the mid-2020s. Rather than treating the Ottoman price revolution and the Republic's chronic inflation problem as unrelated episodes separated by centuries and by fundamentally different monetary regimes, the article argues that both episodes share a common underlying institutional logic: inflation accelerates in Turkish economic history when the state's fiscal needs outrun the capacity, or willingness, of monetary authorities to maintain currency integrity, and decelerates only when institutional credibility is deliberately and durably restored. Drawing on recent economic-historical and macroeconomic scholarship published between 2023 and 2026, the article traces this logic across three periods: early-modern currency debasement under fiscal pressure, the liberalization-era inflation of the Turkish Republic from 1980 to 2001, and the most recent inflationary episode beginning in 2018 and its subsequent disinflation. The article concludes that Turkish inflation history is best understood not as a series of disconnected episodes but as a recurring pattern shaped by the durable tension between fiscal expediency and monetary discipline.