The Turkish President thinks interest rates are the devil’s stuff. His new head of the central bank has now raised the key interest rate again, to 17.5 percent. Their goal: save the economy.
She’s done it again. Turkey’s new central bank governor, Hafize Gaye Erkan, raised interest rates for the second time in a row on Thursday, to 17.5 percent. She only raised it in June, at that time from 8.5 to 15 percent. These are steps that are needed to tackle the country’s persistently extremely high inflation – it was 38.2 percent in June. However, there are also steps that the President does not like. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thinks interest rates are the devil’s stuff. He fired several of Erkan’s predecessors for not wanting to bow to his low interest rate policy.