ANKARA: The head of the central bank of Turkey has denied press allegations that she has granted relatives privileges inside the institution. Hafize Gaye Erkan, 44, the first woman to be appointed president of the bank, granted her father Erol Erkan special favours, according to recent press reports. He enjoyed an office, an official car and bodyguards, former bank employee turned whistle-blower Busra Bozkurt told the daily newspaper Sozcu, which is close to the opposition.

“I was fired on the orders of her father,” she told the paper. “There are video recordings showing him coming every day to the bank with an official car, giving orders to staff when he had no authority for that.”

Bozkurt said Erkan senior had fired her because she had refused to work outside office hours. Sozcu published a copy of the complaint that Bozkurt said she had sent to the Turkish presidency.

News website DW Turkce carried similar allegations, citing an unnamed employee still working at the bank. “Erol Erkan got involved in the work of the administrative services and human resources... and gave them direct orders,” said the source.

In a statement posted Friday on X, formerly Twitter, Erkan denounced the reports as “unfounded allegations” designed to undermine confidence in the bank, and threatened legal action. Erkan took up her job last June following the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of a team of market-friendly economists appointed to turn the economy around. She spent two decades in the United States, where she also studied, before taking up the job in Ankara.

Turkey was struggling with an inflation rate of 65 percent in 2023. Neither Erdogan or Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek have commented on the allegations. — AFP