Money

Exchange rate

Because inflation in Turkey is so bad, there is no way to say what the exchange rate will be even on a day-to-day basis. You’ll likely need to google the exchange rate often.

Exchanging dollars for lira

There are shops that will change dollars into lira. NEVER USE THESE SHOPS. Not even at the airport. The exchange rate they give is universally terrible and they border on scams.

The recommended way to get lira in Turkey (or any other country for that matter) is to withdrawl cash from an ATM (or bankamatik) using your debit card. If the ATM offers to do the currency conversion for you, decline this offer. When you decline, the thing calculating the exchange rate will be your home bank. Since you are a customer of theirs, they have a vested interest in offering you the best rates. To everyone else, you are just a tourist.

ATMs are typically grouped into clusters like this:

Using debit or credit cards

Debit and credit cards are almost universally accepted in Turkey HOWEVER when a shop owner opens an account with their bank to process credit cards, they have the option to select different tiers of service. Often times, the shop owners don’t pay the extra fee to be able to process American cards. If that happens, the card will be declined but there isn’t actually any problem with your card. It’s a problem with their machine/account. Often times, the shop owners themselves don’t know this is why the card doesn’t work.

In these situations, you will have to use cash. This is a pretty common situation. It might happen in 10-20% of the times you try to use your card.