President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has named Hafize Gaye Erkan, as the first woman to become the Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT). More significantly, she was between summer and the end of 2021 the co-CEO at First Republic Bank that went under in March 2023, and a managing director at Goldman Sachs. It is not sure how long the new 41-year-old governor will last, since she is the fifth in four years, according to Hurriyet Daily News. She replaces Şahap Kavcıoğlu, who has been appointed head of the Banking Regulatory and Supervision Agency (BDDK), Türkiye’s banking watchdog. The next meeting of the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is scheduled for June 22, when it is expected that she will begin to reverse the low interest rate policy, and raise the rate from the current 8.5%.
Erkan seems to be well-positioned in the U.S. financial community. She earned her doctorate in operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University and completed two training programs, one on management sciences at Harvard Business School and the other on “leadership” at Stanford University. She was also a member of the board of directors of Tiffany & Co. Hurriyet Daily News fails to mention in its coverage that First Republic went bankrupt.
