Erdoğan dismisses two Vice Ministers of Treasury and Finance

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Shortly after Minister of Treasury and Finance Lütfi Elvan resigned from office and ahead of the Monetary Policy Committee meeting of the Central Bank today (December 16), President and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan issued a Presidential decision and dismissed two Vice Ministers of Treasury and Finance.

According to the Presidential decision published in the Official Gazette earlier today, Şakir Ercan Gül and Mehmet Hamdi Yıldırım have been removed from office; Mahmut Gürcan and Yunus Elitaş have been appointed as the new Vice Ministers of Treasury and Finance.

Abdullah Bayazıt, the Director General of Public Finance of the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, and Ahmet Yalçın Yalçınkaya, the Director General of Economic Programs and Studies, have also been dismissed.

Yakup Asarkaya has been appointed as the Second Chair of the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) and Mustafa Balcı and Olcay Turan have been appointed as BDDK members.

About the new Vice Ministers

Mahmut Gürcan

Businessperson and socks manufacturer. He is from the National Vision, a religious-political movement dating back to the late 1960s. Starting from 2001, he served as a district executive at the ruling AKP and chaired the AKP İstanbul Bakırköy Organization for three terms (2006-2014).

He is a graduate of Zeytinburnu Imam Hatip Religious Vocational Secondary School, Şehremini High School and the Department of Economics of Marmara University. He served as an executive and/or member of several NGOs. He was born in 1966.

Yunus Elitaş

He graduated from the Department of Economics of Kırıkkale University in 2003. In 2004, he was appointed as an assistant tax auditor to Ministry of Finance. From 2013 to 2015, he served as the Finance Ministry's Vice Head of the Administrative and Financial Affairs Department.

He did his MBA at the University of South Florida in the US in December 2015 - December 2017. While he was the Group Chair of Revenue Administration in February 2018, he was appointed as the General Director of Public Accounts on February 28, 2019.

He was born in Ankara in 1982. (HA/SD)