Turkey’s central bank chief resigns after less than a year on the job, new appointed

ANKARA (AFP) : Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed Deputy Central Bank Governor Fatih Karahan to head Turkey’s central bank, the official gazette said early on Saturday, after former central bank chief Hafize Gaye Erkan said Friday she was resigning after less than a year on the job over a media scandal involving her family.

The respected former Wall Street executive said in a social media statement that she had “requested from the president to be pardoned from my duties, which I have carried out with [honor] from the first day.”

The 44-year-old came under withering attack on social media and in some opposition publications for allegedly allowing her father to make unauthorized personnel decisions at the bank.

Erkan has reportedly also angered President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by telling one major newspaper last month that she had to move in with her parents because inflation had made renting in Istanbul unaffordable.

The attacks on Turkey’s first woman central bank governor alarmed investors and created uncertainty about Erdogan’s long-term commitment to his team.

“A major reputation assassination campaign has recently been organized against me,” Erkan said in her statement.

She added that she was stepping down “in order 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.”

Erdogan appointed Erkan in June.