Video footage of a middle-aged man in Turkey burning dollar bills in protest of the Turkish lira’s dramatic decrease against the US dollar and getting scolded by his wife has gone viral, the T24 news website reported on Sunday.
The clip is one of many protest videos showing people burning dollars in Turkey.
“If they have dollars, we have our Allah [God],” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said at a rally on Friday and called on Turks to exchange dollars and gold for Turkish lira last week. Since then, Turks have been protesting the lira-dollar rate of exchange.
The man uses swear words against the US throughout the video. The footage was taken by the man’s son, who calls his mother and says, “Mom, look, dad is burning money.” The woman starts cursing, saying: “What? What are you doing, why are you burning the bills? They were our investment. They are all gone. God damn you. I was going to turn them into Turkish lira.”
Turkey has been facing a currency crisis since its relations with the US administration were dramatically strained over a court decision to put American pastor Andrew Brunson under house arrest after almost two years in pretrial detention rather than release him as demanded by the US administration
The Turkish lira has been in free fall since President Erdoğan appointed his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as finance and treasury minister.