Istanbul: The Turkish President has fired the Head of the Turkish Statistics Institute, who is responsible for posting official inflation statistics between other data.
President Recep’s decision to Recep Tayyip Erdogan was announced on the official sheet early on Saturday.
He replaced Saits Erdal Dincer, less than a year after his appointment, with Erhan Cetinkaya, who served as vice president of the Turkish banking agency.
The reason the step was unclear.
Prices have skyrocketed in recent months because Turkey has experienced economic turmoil with an unstable national currency, triggered by a massive interest rate cut.
Erdogan is very contrary to high interest rates, saying they cause inflation, contrary to established economic theory.
Since September, the central bank has cut interest rates by 500 basis points to 14 percent, but stopped cutting in January.
This country is very dependent on imports for its energy needs and consumer goods.
Consumer price inflation for December was officially announced at 36.08 percent, up from 21.31 percent in November.
But the opposition parties have questioned the independence of the Turkish Statistics Institute and the data challenged.
Independent experts in the inflation research group, or Enag, said the actual annual inflation for December was 82.81 percent.
The Turkish Central Bank revised inflation predictions this week to 23.2 percent at the end of 2022 and dropped by 5 percent at the end of 2024.
Erdogan also announced that the former Minister of Justice Bizdag would return to his position, replacing Abdulhamit Gul who had it served as minister since 2017 But resigned without announcing the reason.
The Turkish President points to the Head of the New Statistics Agency
