Kemal Dervis, the economist who saved her Türkiye after the financial crash of 2001, he died at the age of 74 from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

When the country was on the brink of bankruptcy in March 2001, then-Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit asked him to step down as World Bank Vice President and return to his country to prevent its collapse. Dervish resigned and immediately set to work. He used his knowledge and contacts abroad, as well as his independence from business interests and guilds at home, to successfully design and implement deep structural reforms that changed the way the Turkish economy worked. We stabilized the banking system, reduced inflation, freed the market. He became the architect of Turkey’s salvation and laid the foundations for a long period of economic growth for many years. As the FT comments: “Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who started out as a reformer seeking EU membership, initially continued to implement the program he inherited from Dervish after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was elected by a landslide in 2002.”

“The interests he raised were so strong that he wore a bulletproof vest,” recalls Ajay Saiber, the World Bank’s Ankara representative, who worked closely with him during his 17-month tenure.

During his tenure, Dervis privatized telecommunications companies, electricity companies, and made the central bank of the neighboring country an independent authority. He also reduced or eliminated agricultural subsidies, but also froze public sector wages, sparking protests and social unrest. Many believe that these measures laid the foundation for Turkey’s economic development.

The Turkish media focused only on him: from his breakfast “jogging” to dinner with his wife was the first topic in the news.

Dervis studied economics at the London School of Economics and received his PhD from Princeton University. In 2003, he tried to create a political movement with former Foreign Minister Ismail Cem, but they did not find the support they had hoped for. Dervish then returned to the United States, where from 2005 to 2009 he worked for the United Nations Development Program. He then moved to the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, where he led the Global Economy and Development Program until 2017.