Has the President of TurkStat been dismissed? Who Has Been Appointed as the Head of TURKSTAT?

The President of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Prof. Dr. Sait Erdal Dinçer was dismissed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. With the decision published in the Official Gazette, Erhan Çetinkaya, Deputy Chairman of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK), was appointed to replace Dinçer.

Why was TÜİK criticized?

The Turkish economy has experienced one of the most serious exchange rate fluctuations in its history in the past weeks.

In this period, the inflation data announced by TUIK became the subject of discussion. Because, the big differences between the data announced by the entities that publish alternative inflation rates and the data announced by TURKSTAT attracted the attention of the public.

TurkStat announced that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by 13,58 percent in December compared to the previous month, while the CPI increased to 36,08 percent on an annual basis. Thus, annual inflation rose to its highest level since September 2002.

Who is Erhan Cetinkaya?

Erhan Çetinkaya's biography details are as follows; He was born in Malatya in 1981. He completed his primary, secondary and high school education in Malatya. He graduated from Bilkent University, Department of Industrial Engineering in 2004. He worked as an analyst and project engineer at Cybersoft Information Technologies between 2004-2005. He started working at the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency in 2005 and worked in the Audit and Risk Management departments until 2012 on banking supervision and banking legislation. Later, he received his MBA (Master of Business Administration) diploma from Duke University The Fuqua School of Business in the USA and returned to his job at the BRSA in 2014. In 2015, he was appointed as the Head of Risk Management Department.

He represented Turkey in the working groups of Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in Switzerland. He holds CFA (Certified Financial Analyst) and FRM (Financial Risk Manager) certificates and served as Assistant General Manager for Operations at Vakıf Katılım Bankası A.Ş. from September 2017 to December 2019.

As of 20 December 2019, he has been appointed as the Deputy Chairman of the BRSA.

He was appointed as the President of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) by the President's decision published in the Official Gazette dated 29 January 2022.