Turkey names new central bank governor

Turkey central bank

Turkey’s first female central bank governor, Hafize Gaye Erkan, has resigned, citing personal reasons.

Deputy governor Fatih Karahan was appointed as her successor on Saturday, local newspapers reported, citing the official gazette.

“A major reputation assassination has recently been organised against me,” Erkan said in a post on the social messaging platform X.

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She added that she was stepping down “to prevent my family and my innocent child, who is not even one-and-a-half years old, from being further affected by this process.”

Erkan, a former US bank executive, began raising rates when she was appointed in June 2023. The central bank had hiked its key rate to 45 percent from 8.5 percent.  

“Our economic programme has started to bear fruit,” she said, citing rising foreign reserves and expectations that inflation will begin cooling around mid-year as proof of this success.

Finance minister Mehmet Şimşek said Erkan’s decision is her personal decision and she took it at her discretion, Daily Sabah newspaper reported.

He added that the policies led by President Tayyip Erdoğan will continue to be implemented under the leadership of the new governor.

“I respect her decision and thank her for her service to our country,” Şimşek said.

Karahan, born in 1982, is one of the youngest central bank governors.

His time as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was followed by a role at Amazon, where he eventually became the principal economist.

Karahan assumed the position of deputy chief of Turkey’s central bank in July 2023.