 has claimed in an interview with the Sözcü daily that Erol Erkan, the father of TCMB Governor Hafize Gaye Erkan, slapped a staff member on the bank's premises, doubling down on her allegations of influence exerted by the Erkan family over bank operations.){kind=link}
A former employee of the Turkish Central Bank (TCMB) has claimed in an interview with the Sözcü daily that Erol Erkan, the father of TCMB Governor Hafize Gaye Erkan, slapped a staff member on the bank’s premises, doubling down on her allegations of influence exerted by the Erkan family over bank operations.
Büşra Bozkurt, whose previous complaint with the Presidential Communications Center (CİMER) alleging influence in the running of the bank by Erkan’s parents was headlined in the Turkish media on Thursday, made new allegations in her Saturday interview with Sözcü.
Bozkurt had previously filed a formal complaint claiming she was fired due to Erol Erkan’s direct intervention.
According to Bozkurt, Erol Erkan slapped a staff member in an elevator at the TCMB, claiming there is surveillance footage of the incident at the TCMB.
Bozkurt described a climate of fear at the bank engendered by Erol Erkan, whom she accuses of attempting to influence bank operations and engaging in physical violence against an employee.
Bozkurt’s accusations also extended to claims of extravagant expenditures and misuse of bank resources for the personal benefit of the Erkan family, including a private kitchen for the family’s use at the bank and the procurement of luxury items at bank expense.
Erol Erkan, in a statement to the Patronlar Dünyası news website on Saturday, vehemently denied the allegations, suggesting a campaign to undermine his daughter’s leadership and the bank’s role in Turkey’s economic recovery. He characterized the claims as part of a conspiracy and questioned the motives behind them.
In response to the allegations, journalist Uğur Dündar shared WhatsApp messages between Erol Erkan’s wife, Gamze Erkan, and a bank employee named Kübra, in which Kübra denies the slapping incident and Erkan’s wife expresses gratitude for her clarifying the situation.
Governor Erkan previously worked at companies in the US including Goldman Sachs and First Republic Bank. She was named head of the TCMB after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan secured another five years at the helm of government in the May elections and made a U-turn from his previous economic policy of low interest rates.
Erdoğan put together a new economic team, with former Merrill Lynch London economist Mehmet Şimşek as finance minister and Erkan as TCMB governor, who in turn initiated a tightening of monetary policy that saw the key interest rate rise from 8.5 percent in May to 42.5 percent in December.