In late 2011, Turkey started to allow commercial banks to use gold instead of the Turkish lira for their required deposits at the central bank. These deposits are known as reserve requirements and help ensure that the banks are capitalised.

Over the past six-or-so years, Turkey's central bank has accumulated an additional 400 metric tonnes of gold.That's a lot of yellow bricks – more than what Britain has - and the sizeable stash has the possibility to take the edge off the crisis.

To put the Turkish gold haul in perspective, there are 10 million ounces of gold – roughly 311 tonnes - at the Bank of England, according to the New York-based financial consulting firm CPM Group.