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7.2 Central Bank policy rate
Turkey's central bank governor since March Sahap Kavcioglu is reportedly under investigation for plagiarism by his former university.
Istanbul’s Marmara University is probing allegations that his 2003 doctoral thesis on problematic loans at commercial banks borrowed whole sections of a report by the central bank without proper citation, Bloomberg reported on July 8.
The thesis was overseen by Erisah Arican, chairman of the Istanbul stock exchange and deputy chairman of the country’s sovereign wealth fund. Arican also oversaw the dissertation of Berat Albayrak, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law and former finance minister, and that of ex-central bank governor Murat Uysal, who faced similar plagiarism allegations in 2019.
“The issue is being investigated in line with the Marmara University Publication Ethics Board directive,” Omer Akgiray, the board’s chief, said in an email, according to Bloomberg.
The probe began after the left-wing Birgun newspaper filed a request for information to the communications centre of Turkey’s presidency, he said.
Opposition media have previously accused Arican of writing Albayrak’s thesis, pointing to leaked emails obtained by a Turkish hacker group. She was head of Marmara University’s banking and insurance institute between 1998 and 2006 and has served as chief economic adviser to Erdogan.
36 TURKEY Country Report August 2021 www.intellinews.com