Sold 118 tons in two weeks! Türkiye sold nearly 70 tons of gold last week, the most since 2013

By Zhang Yaqi

Source: Wall Street News

To cope with surging energy bills and downward pressure on the lira triggered by the Iran conflict, Turkey’s central bank sold more than **118 tons of gold** (worth roughly $20 billion) over the past two weeks — an amount analysts say equals its total gold reserve accumulation over the previous six years. Nearly 70 tons were sold just last week alone, marking the largest weekly drop on record since at least 2013.

Amid the fallout from the Iran war, Turkey’s deployment of gold reserves has far exceeded market expectations.

Data released on Thursday, cited by Reuters, shows Turkey’s central bank gold reserves plummeted by more than 118 tons over the past two weeks, worth nearly $20 billion. Of this, reserves fell by **69.1 tons** to 702.5 tons in the past week — the sharpest weekly decline in data going back to at least 2013.

According to estimates by three banking sources, around 26 tons of gold were sold directly last week, with another 42 tons deployed through gold swaps. In the prior week, gold reserves had shrunk by 49.3 tons. The central bank has not commented on these estimates.

The move marks a major policy shift for Turkey, which has been one of the world’s most aggressive gold buyers over the past decade.

Analysts note the sell-off represents roughly 15% of its total gold stockpile, equivalent to the reserves it built up over six years. Following the outbreak of the Iran conflict, global energy prices surged, demand for foreign exchange liquidity jumped, and the lira came under heavy pressure — forcing authorities to tap gold reserves on a large scale to stabilize the currency and cover energy import costs.

Despite such a large concentrated sell-off, gold prices have not fallen correspondingly, raising questions in the market: which buyers have been consistently absorbing the massive volume of gold offloaded by Turkey?

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