Central Bank Deputy Governor Cevdet Akçay stated that claiming inflation will be stuck at around 30% is a superstition.

Central Bank (TCMB) President Fatih Karahan presented the first inflation report of the year at the Istanbul Finance Center. TCMB raised its inflation forecast for 2025 from 21% to 24%. The inflation forecast for 2026 was set at 12% and for 2027 at 8%. When reminded of his statement about inflation being sticky at 30-40% levels before joining the Central Bank, Akçay was asked whether the increase in the 2025 inflation forecast from 21% to 24% would be interpreted as not expecting stickiness in inflation. He replied: “Let me say jokingly, ‘I wish I didn’t say that.’ because it was misunderstood. What I said was: ‘We actually don’t know where that level is. It could have been at 30, 40, but somewhere it will stick.’

Regarding this, I want to tell my colleagues working on this that actually there are a few methods related to looking back at the data of Turkey. No matter which method they use, they can find a step or regime level between 3 to 5.

They can see the last point where we got stuck. We also have such calculations. We see that we are breaking the level we are currently at, but we don’t know where the new level will be and how difficult it will be to break it, etc., we don’t know, nobody knows. So, the mistake here is that there are many people who claim like they know. ‘It will get stuck in the 30s and won’t come down.’ How do you know? Based on what are you saying this? ‘For it to go down to 30, the cost needs to be very high.’ How do you know? Maybe the cost will be very high. Maybe it won’t need to be high at all.

It’s completely our stance. What we do, coordination, determination, all these are very related things. Speaking about them without knowing, ‘Stuck at 30, won’t go down.’ These are actually a bit of superstition. It could be 30 but it could be 20, it could be 18. We don’t know. We don’t know where we will get stuck.

Therefore, I don’t think that speaking as if we know is correct from our side or for those conveying information to us.”