With Hafiz Gaye Erkan, the “terrible girl from Turkey”, as she is called, the Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Hafiz Gaye Erkan, who is expected to lead the Turkish Central Bank (TCMB), came to Turkey yesterday afternoon with her family. If she is eventually appointed to the TCMB, she will become the first female head in the history of the Central Bank.

Educated at Bosphorus and Princeton universities, the 41-year-old (born 1982) has been a senior executive for many years at Goldman Sachs, Tiffany & Co and many other financial giants. She was the first student to complete a two-year doctoral program at Princeton in one year. In this way she became the “youngest professor of Economics” in the country.

Erkan met today in Ankara with the newly appointed Turkish Minister of Economy and Finance Mehmet Simsek, According to reports.

She is one of “a handful of candidates” to succeed current central bank chief Sahap Cavcioglu, who led Erdogan’s unorthodox policy of cutting interest rates from 2021, despite inflation hitting a 24-year high last year above 85 %.

A former co-managing director at First Republic Bank and a former managing director at Goldman Sachs, Erkan could not immediately be reached for comment.

Erdogan’s office and the finance ministry did not comment on Erkan.