Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had called this problem a "national shame".

In late December 2003, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey passed a law that allowed for the removal of six zeroes from the currency, and the creation of the new lira.

Following its introduction, the official name of the currency was the "New Turkish Lira", but according to the Central Bank, the word "new" (yeni) was only a "temporary" measure.

[citation needed] Banknotes, referred to by the Central Bank as the "E-8 Emission Group", were introduced in 2005 in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 new lira.

All notes show portraits of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from different points of his life and images of various historical and otherwise important buildings and places in Turkey.