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The president of Turkey has fired one of the deputy governors of the country’s central bank, the third senior official fired in two months in a series of interventions in the nominally independent institution that have annoyed investors.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a Tuesday in the Official Gazette in the early hours of Tuesday dismissing Oguzhan Ozbas, a member of the monetary policy committee, and replacing him with Semih Tumen, a professor of economics at TED University in Ankara.
In March, Erdogan fired Naci Agbal, the central bank’s third governor in less than two years. Agbal was replaced by Sahap Kavcioglu, a newspaper columnist who shares Erdogan’s unconventional view that high interest rates cause inflation rather than stifle it. A week later, Erdogan replaced Deputy Governor Murat Cetinkaya.
The lira has lost 14% of its value against the dollar since March, in a fear that the Kavcioglu-led bank may not challenge Erdogan to keep monetary policy tight to fight inflation, which has been stuck in double digits for much of the last three years. .
Erdogan has said that both interest rates and inflation will be below 10% this year. It has long been the seat of the central bank to suppress debt rates to stimulate the economy.
The central bank holds its next rate-setting meeting on June 17. Kavcioglu has pledged to keep policy tight until inflation slows, but has removed some of his predecessor’s falcon language from policy statements.
Tumen, 44, holds graduate degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago. He previously worked at the central bank in various roles and as Erdogan’s human resources advisor.
Only three of the seven members of the monetary policy committee have served as policy makers for three or more years, with the rest appointed since early 2020.
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