BREAKING: Turkey's central bank sold -58 tons of gold, worth over $8 billion, in just 2 weeks.

Gold reserves dropped -6 tons in the week ending March 13th and another -52 tons in the week ending March 20th, bringing total reserves down to 513 tons, marking the largest drop in 7 years.

Over half of the gold was used to borrow US Dollars via swaps, with the rest sold outright on the open market.

The gold sales also exceeded the ~43 tons of outflows from all global gold-backed ETFs over the same 2-week period, making Turkey the single largest source of gold liquidation worldwide.

This comes as the central bank is burning its FX reserves to defend the lira, which has come under intense pressure from surging energy import costs and rising US Dollar demand since the Iran War began.

As a result, total Turkey FX reserves dropped ~$40 billion, to ~$175 billion, the lowest since Q3 2025.