different sizes to prevent forgery. The main specificity of this new series is that each denomination depicts a famous Turkish personality, rather than geographical sites and architectural features of Turkey. The dominant color of the 5-Turkish-lira banknote has been determined as "purple" on the second series of the current banknotes. Currency sign The lira was originally symbolised as TL, inverting the characters of the Ottoman lira's sign, LT, which stood for "" in French. Historically English language sources used "£T" or "T£" for the currency, but it is unknown whether this notation was ever used within Turkey. The current currency sign of Turkish lira was created by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey in 2012. The new sign was selected after a country-wide contest. The new symbol is composed of the letter L shaped like a half anchor, and embedded double-striped letter T angled at 20 degrees. The design, created by Tülay Lale, was endorsed after a country-wide competition. It was chosen as the winner from a shortlist of seven submissions to the board of the Central Bank, selected from a total of 8,362 entries. The symbol resembles the first letter of the Turkish monetary unit, L, in the form of a half anchor with double stroke. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the new symbol on 1 March 2012. At its unveiling, Erdoğan explained the design as "the anchor shape hopes to convey that the currency is a 'safe harbour' while the upward-facing lines represent its rising prestige". Faik Öztrak, vice chairman of the main opposition party CHP, alleged that the new sign resembles the initials TE of then-prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan in a reference to the tughra of Ottoman sultans. The new Turkish lira sign was also criticized for allegedly showing a similarity with an upside-down Armenian dram sign. In May 2012, the Unicode Technical Committee accepted the encoding of a new character for the currency sign, which was included in Unicode 6.2 released in September 2012. On Microsoft Windows operating systems, when using Turkish-Q or Turkish-F keyboard layouts, it can be typed with the combination . 2018–present currency crisis In 2018, the lira's exchange rate accelerated deterioration, reaching a level of ₺4.5/US$ by mid-May and of ₺4.9 a week later. Among economists, the accelerating loss of value was generally attributed to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan preventing the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey from making