Deputy Governor of the Central Bank Cevdet Akçay emphasized that stating inflation will remain stuck in the 30% range is a myth.

Central Bank (TCMB) President Fatih Karahan presented the first inflation report of the year at the Istanbul Finance Center. The TCMB increased its inflation forecast for 2025 from 21% to 24%. The inflation forecast was set at 12% for 2026 and 8% for 2027. Referring to his previous statement about the possibility of inflation being sticky at the 30-40% level 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 responded to the question as follows: “Let me jokingly say, ‘I wish I hadn’t said that.’ because it was misunderstood. What I said there was: ‘We actually don’t know where that level was. It could have been 30, it could have been 40, but it will stick somewhere.’

Regarding this issue, let me tell my colleagues who work on this, when they look back at the data for Turkey, there are actually a few methods related to this. Whatever they use, they can find a step or regime level between 3 and 5.

They can see where we last got stuck. We also have such calculations. We see that the level we are currently at is about to break, but we do not know where the new level will establish and how much we will struggle to break it, and so on, we don’t know either, nobody knows. Therefore, the mistake here is this: there are many people who claim as if they know. ‘It will get stuck in the 30s, it won’t go down.’ How do you know? I mean, based on what are you saying this? ‘For it to drop to 30, the cost has 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.

This is completely our stance. What we do, coordination, determination, these are all very related things. Without knowing these, saying ‘it’s stuck at 30, it’s hard to go down,’ these are actually a bit of a myth. It could be 30 but it could also be 20, 18. We don’t know. We don’t know where we will get stuck.

Therefore, I do not believe that talking as if we know is correct, neither for us nor for those who try to convey something to us.”