About two years ago, as the Turkish lira was continuing on its long downward slide, Batikan Erdogan created a graph that made him reassess his career choices.
Seeing that his earnings in the previous five years were flat in dollar terms, he decided he needed to earn in foreign currency. But, rather than join the many people he knew who had left the country in recent years to work abroad, he found a job working from Turkey for a start-up based in Seattle.
“I didn’t want to leave my family, my friends, just to move to a different country for work purposes,” he said, adding that the purchasing power of his dollar-denominated salary was also greater in Istanbul. “Earning in dollars and spending in liras is more appealing to me compared to living in Berlin and spending in euros.”