...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important...were truly shocked and angered last week by his decision to sack Naci Agbal, the central bank governor, less than five months after his appointment.
"This was a very sad day. No one could reasonably explain why he did it so suddenly," a
... for fear of being murdered...
. "Why did you appoint him in the first place just months ago if you were going to fire him?"
When Erdogan appointed Agbal as central bank governor, the markets perceived it as a pragmatic move to stop the lira's free-fall and restore order and confidence into the
His sudden firing depreciated the lira by around 10 percent versus the dollar, moved the country risk premiums to the highest points ever, and evaporated the profits made this year on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.
However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
for those who are close to Erdogan, the firing wasn't really a surprise. "Erdogan's relationship with Agbal had been steadily deteriorating," said one
Officials and sources close to the presidency say Erdogan was truly astonished by Agbal's interest rate increases. "Publicly and privately, Erdogan repeatedly told Agbal what he thinks of interest rate hikes. And Agbal seemed to have understood what the president wants," the official close to the president added.
INCREASING RATES
Erdogan is famous for his ideological stance against high interest rates. Islam forbids it, but he also believes that high interest rates lead to high inflation, a controversial and heterodox theory that has roots in his ideological upbringing during the Islamist Welfare Party years.
When Erdogan appointed Agbal, who was previously his former budget director at the presidency, he also fell out with his son-in-law Berat Albayrak, who resigned as economy minister after the president discovered that the central bank's forex reserves were in tatters.
Erdogan named respected politician Lutfi Elvan as Albayrak's replacement, and started to talk about a "bitter pill" that the government needed to swallow.
"When Erdogan talked about the bitter pill, he meant officially moving the interest rates to the unofficial market rate," a source close to the
Agbal's predecessor, Murat Uysal, used backdoor methods to increase rates while officially holding the main policy interest rate much lower.