The rental market in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul is apparently overwhelming even the country’s most powerful banker: Hafize Gaye Erkan, head of the Turkish central bank since June, says she has moved back in with her parents. “We couldn’t find accommodation in Istanbul. It’s terribly expensive. We stayed with my parents,” said 44-year-old Erkan in an interview with the newspaper “Hürriyet” published on Saturday.
“Is it possible that Istanbul has become more expensive than Manhattan?” Erkan further asked in the interview. Before her appointment as the head of the Turkish central bank, the 44-year-old had lived in the USA for two decades – and worked there in management positions at several major banks, including Goldman Sachs.
Turkey has been experiencing massive inflation for months: in November the inflation rate was 62 percent compared to the same month last year. In Istanbul, rents rose by 77.1 percent during the same period, according to a study by the city’s Bahçesehir University.
As a countermeasure, the Turkish government has limited rent increases to 25 percent. According to experts, however, this measure has further aggravated the situation on the rental market: landlords are now trying to get rid of their tenants by all means, sometimes even illegally, in order to re-rent properties for prices that are many times higher.
To combat inflation, the Turkish central bank under Erkan’s leadership has increased the key interest rate by 8.5 percentage points to 40 percent. However, these “monetary policy tightening measures” have now come to an end, Erkan told “Hürriyet”.
