Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has fired the country’s central bank governor and replaced him with a former finance minister after the lira crisis erupted in recent months.

Murat Usal, who was sacked by a presidential decree on Saturday morning, spent just one month in his four-year term at the head of the central bank, for no reason.

Mr Usal endured criticism from investors for lowering interest rates, even as the currency lost more than 30 per cent of its value against the dollar this year, which was seen as a massive discount to Mr Erdogan, who has demanded lower bank rates. Despite double-digit inflation, the economy is growing.

Dramatic cutting cycle Turkey’s core policy rate has been reduced from 24 percent to 8.25 percent in one year. In September, the central bank reversed course and raised interest rates by 200 basis points since the lira began to plummet, but since then it has relied on other tools to strengthen monetary policy without touching the benchmark rate.

Mr Usal will be replaced by Nassi Agabal, who served as Mr Erdogan’s finance minister from 2015 to 2018 and is now head of the presidential budget office.

The overnight removal of the central bank governor led to the dismissal of Murat Chetinkaya, Mr Weasel’s predecessor, in July 2019, who fired Mr Erdogan for failing to cut high interest rates that forced the lira after the 2018 currency crisis.

The latest firing is likely to raise new concerns about Mr Erdogan’s interference in monetary policy at the nominally independent central bank.