Turkey’s Central Bank Governor, Hafize Gaye Erkan, announced her resignation on Friday in response to a scandal involving her family.
Erkan stated in an announcement on social media that she had asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to relieve her of her duties, which, she said, she had fulfilled with honour from day one.
President Erdogan swiftly replaced her with Deputy Governor Fatih Karahan, who joined the Federal Reserve in New York in 2012 as an economist, before moving to Amazon in 2022, and the Turkish Central Bank in July 2023.
His appointment would appear to confirm Erdogan’s market-friendly stance, following years of economic crisis that saw inflation reach 85% in 2022 and close to 65% in 2023.
Multiple Turkish media sources had accused Ms. Erkan of granting favours to her family within the Central Bank, which she denied, and of allowing her father to make unlawful decisions at the bank.
Widely esteemed for her expertise in the United States, the 44-year-old former governor, the first woman to hold the post, assumed her position in June 2023 following President Erdogan’s re-election in May 2023.
Investors in the West had praised her initial measures after her appointment, including a swift series of interest rate increases that helped stabilise the plummeting Lira and control Turkey’s soaring cost of living.
