President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed two new deputy central bank governors, according to a decision published early on Tuesday in the country's Official Gazette.
Erdoğan appointed Fatma Özkul, who was a member of the bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), and Gazi Ishak Kara as the new deputy governors of the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT), according to the decision.
The duo joins the top ranks of the bank, led by Governor Fatih Karahan, who assumed the post in early 2024. Prior to the appointment of Özkul and Kara, the bank had only two deputy governors, Hatice Karahan and Cevdet Akçay.
Akçay is rumored to be retiring this April as he turns 65, Bloomberg News reported last October.
Özkul, born in the eastern province of Elaziğ in 1978, graduated from Marmara University's Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Business Administration. She completed master's and doctoral studies at the same university, according to her biography available on CBRT's website.
She was appointed to the CBRT's monetary committee on Dec. 23, 2023.
Kara, on the other hand, graduated from the business administration department of Istanbul University in 2004 and then completed a master's degree in economics from Boğaziçi University in 2008. He has a ph.D. in the same field from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completed in 2013.
According to data available online, Kara is designated as the chief of the Financial Stability Assessment Section at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since 2023 and the principal economist at the same board of the U.S. central bank since 2019.
