Turkey's Erdogan appoints Hafize Gaye Erkan as central bank governor
Exterior of the Turkish Central Bank, known as Turkiye Cumhuriyet Merkez Bankasi in Ankara.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has appointed a former Wall Street banker Hafize Gaye Erkan as the country's new central bank governor — another move that could potentially mark a policy pivot away from economic unorthodoxy.
Erkan, Turkey's first female central bank chief, was a former managing director at Goldman Sachs and co-CEO at First Republic Bank.
She is also Turkey's fifth central bank governor in four years.
Her appointment, alongside new economy minister Mehmet Simsek's, could be a sign that Turkey's monetary policy will normalize following years of ultra-low borrowing costs and soaring inflation, analysts say.
"Given her training at Princeton and her top-level experience in the U.S. banking sector, I assume that the new governor will return to orthodox policies," Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koç University in Istanbul, told CNBC in an e-mail.
The caveat would lie in how much autonomy the central bank could exercise, and to what extent —something that Demiralp says investors will have to wait and see.
Source: CNBC
