(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s new crop of central bankers had something in common long before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appointed them to lead his economic overhaul.

Three new deputy governors announced on Friday, along with chief Hafize Gaye Erkan, graduated from Istanbul’s Bogazici University, one of the most prestigious schools in Turkey and the highest-profile site of resistance to government influence over education.

The alums’ new out-sized role in setting monetary policy is a smaller-scale example of the influence wielded by US universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has trained central bankers from the US to Australia and Brazil.

Bogazici, which evolved from an American college founded in 1863, has a reputation for western-leaning liberalism and was until recently seen as immune from Erdogan’s interventions.

That changed in 2021 when he appointed a loyalist rector, sparking mass rallies by students concerned about government influence and the erosion of democracy and freedoms. Protesters were arrested and Erdogan accused them of terrorism. The rector was later removed.

Now Bogazici graduates have a majority on the seven-member Monetary Policy Committee. Two seats are vacant. 

Governor Erkan graduated as a valedictorian in 2001 with a degree in industrial engineering. Deputies Fatih Karahan, Cevdet Akcay and Hatice Karahan have Bogazici degrees in mathematics, economics and business administration, respectively, according to their biographies on the central bank website. Hatice Karahan returned for a master’s while Akcay taught there from 1992-2001.

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