Turkey appointed Fatih Karahan as the head of the Central Bank on Saturday after Hafize Gaye Erkan resigned from the post on Friday, News.ro reported, citing Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.

42-year-old Fatih Karakhan held the post of deputy head of the bank since July 28.

He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at Bogazici University in Turkey and holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Previously, he was an economist, head of the labor and commodity research group, and monetary policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

He also taught at Columbia University and New York University, became Amazon’s senior economist, and was named the company’s chief economist.

The head of the Turkish central bank resigned, citing the need to protect her family

Hafiz Gaye Erkan heads the Central Bank of Turkey from June 8, 2023. She resigned on Friday, citing the need to protect her family amid a “reputational assassination” and raising questions about the aggressive policies she has pursued during her eight months in office. this position, writes Reuters.

Erkan, the first woman to head the central bank, is the fifth governor to leave the post in as many years after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan fired the last four, undermining his independence.

Cabinet leaders were quick to say the economic program would continue after she left.

She was appointed by Erdogan in June to make a 180-degree U-turn after years of low interest rates that led to soaring inflation and a flight of foreign investors.

Since June, the central bank has raised the key interest rate from 8.5% to 45%. Last week, after another hike, it signaled that it had tightened enough to achieve lower inflation, signaling a stop.

Hafiz Gaye Erkan, a former US bank chief, said “our economic program has begun to bear fruit,” citing rising foreign exchange reserves and expectations that inflation will moderate in the middle of the year.

“Despite all these positive developments, as the public knows, there has recently been a massive smear campaign against me,” she wrote on social media platform X on Friday.

“To prevent further impact on my family and my innocent child, who is not yet a year and a half old, I have asked our president to release me from the debt,” she announced.

Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said that Erkan’s resignation was her personal decision and the economic program will continue without interruption.

Inflation neared 65% last month and is expected to start falling around June. Foreign investors, including some of the world’s biggest fund managers, began buying local Turkish bonds late last year in a sign of confidence in the program.

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• A big scandal in Turkey: the head of the central bank resigned, citing the need to protect her family
• ‘It’s terribly expensive’: Inflation in Turkey is so high that the head of the Central Bank has returned with his parents
• Inflation in Turkey has accelerated to 65% and is likely to continue rising until the middle of the year