From Ankara to Toronto: Hafize Gaye Erkan Returns to Global Finance — and the Story Is More Complicated Than the Headlines Suggest

In late 2025, quietly and without fanfare, Hafize Gaye Erkan joined Fairfax Financial Holdings — Canada’s $108 billion insurance and investment giant — as President of Banking and Fintech. The appointment was confirmed publicly only on 7 March 2026, in CEO Prem Watsa’s annual letter to shareholders. For Turkey’s first female central bank governor, whose eight-month tenure at the TCMB ended in controversy and whose two-year post-dismissal salary arrangement drew intense scrutiny, the move marks a significant chapter. TBMag analyses the appointment, the company, and what it tells us about the international currency of Turkish financial talent.

The announcement arrived in the most understated format available to a $108 billion company: a single paragraph in Prem Watsa’s annual letter to Fairfax Financial shareholders, dated 7 March 2026. ‘We are pleased to announce that Hafize Gaye Erkan joined Fairfax toward the end of 2025 as President of Banking and Insurtech,’ wrote Watsa, the Indian-born Canadian billionaire known as ‘Canada’s Buffett’ for his value-investing philosophy and his four-decade stewardship of a company he built from a small regional insurer into a global financial services group. ‘She has a wealth of knowledge of the banking sector through senior positions at Goldman Sachs, Co-CEO and President of First Republic Bank, and most recently as Governor of the Central Bank of Turkey. Hafize will initially provide oversight to our banking operations and assist with developing opportunities in the Insurtech space.’

The appointment had in fact been made months earlier — in the final weeks of 2025 — but became public knowledge only with Watsa’s shareholder letter and the simultaneous update of Fairfax’s website, where Erkan’s name now appears as President of Fairfax Banking and FinTech. The Bloomberg report confirming the news was filed by journalist Beril Akman, and it arrived with a detail that Turkish media seized upon immediately: the timing of the announcement coincided almost exactly with the expiry of the two-year post-dismissal salary arrangement from which Erkan had been benefiting since leaving the TCMB in February 2024.

The Salary Question: Context and Controversy

The post-dismissal salary arrangement requires some explanation for readers unfamiliar with Turkish public sector law. A 2021 legislative amendment granted senior executives of institutions including the TCMB and the BDDK (Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency) the right to continue receiving their full salary for two years following dismissal — whether or not they took up alternative employment. Erkan, who resigned but was formally processed as dismissed, was entitled to this provision. Given that the TCMB governor’s salary by 2026 was reported to exceed 750,000 Turkish lira per month, the arrangement represented a significant ongoing financial commitment from the Turkish state.

The timing — new role confirmed publicly the same month the state salary expired — is, at minimum, a striking coincidence. Turkish media and social media were swift to note it. Whether it reflects genuine sequencing (Erkan waited to ensure the state arrangement concluded before her private sector role was disclosed) or simply the natural timing of Watsa’s annual letter cycle is not clear from available reporting. What is clear is that the optics have drawn scrutiny, and that TBMag, which has always tried to report on Turkish business figures with both celebration of achievement and honest acknowledgement of context, would be doing its readers a disservice to omit it.

Who Is Hafize Gaye Erkan? The Career Before and After the TCMB

Born in Istanbul in 1979, Erkan completed her undergraduate degree at Bogazici University before pursuing a doctorate in financial engineering at Princeton — a credential that placed her among the most technically sophisticated financial professionals of her generation anywhere in the world. Her career trajectory from Princeton was, by any measure, exceptional. She joined Goldman Sachs, where she rose to managing director level, developing expertise in risk management and structured finance. She then moved to First Republic Bank, the San Francisco-based premium private bank that would later collapse spectacularly in 2023, where she served as Co-CEO and President — making her, at that point, one of the highest-ranking Turkish-origin executives in American banking.

Her appointment as TCMB Governor in June 2023 — at the recommendation of Finance and Treasury Minister Mehmet Simsek, as part of the post-election pivot toward orthodox economic policy — was received internationally as a signal of serious intent. Turkey had spent years under heterodox monetary policy, with interest rates held artificially low despite soaring inflation. Erkan’s mandate was to reverse this: to raise rates aggressively enough to bring inflation under control while maintaining financial system stability. She delivered on the rate-raising mandate — the policy rate rose from 8.5% to 40% during her tenure — but her eight months in office were turbulent in ways that had nothing to do with monetary policy.

The controversy that ultimately ended her tenure centred on allegations made by a TCMB employee, Busra Bozkurt, regarding Erkan’s management style and the role of Erkan’s father within the institution. Erkan denied the allegations, but requested her resignation from President Erdogan in early February 2024. She was succeeded by Fatih Karahan, who has continued the orthodox monetary policy trajectory she established.

“She has a wealth of knowledge of the banking sector through senior positions at Goldman Sachs, Co-CEO and President of First Republic Bank, and most recently as Governor of the Central Bank of Turkey.”

Fairfax Financial: What Erkan Is Joining

Fairfax Financial Holdings is not, to British audiences, a household name in the way that its closest American equivalents — Berkshire Hathaway, or the large US insurance conglomerates — might be. But it is, by any measure, a significant global institution. Founded in 1985 by Prem Watsa, who restructured a failing Canadian regional insurer and built it, over four decades, into a $108 billion asset group operating across property and casualty insurance, reinsurance, and investment management in more than thirty countries. The company’s investment portfolio includes stakes in Under Armour, BlackBerry, Eurobank of Greece, and a range of insurance companies across North America, Europe, and Asia. With over 60,000 employees globally, Fairfax is among Canada’s largest financial services groups and a significant participant in the Lloyd’s of London insurance market.

Watsa’s investment philosophy — patient, value-oriented, contrarian when conditions warrant — has made him one of the most respected figures in Canadian business. His annual shareholder letters are read, in Canadian financial circles, with something of the attention that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire letters attract globally. The fact that he chose to introduce Erkan’s appointment in that letter — rather than a standard press release — signals the seriousness with which he regards the hire.

Erkan’s specific mandate at Fairfax is to oversee the group’s banking operations and to develop its strategy in fintech and insurtech — the application of digital technology to insurance products and distribution. This is, in 2026, one of the fastest-moving areas of financial services globally: the intersection of insurance, data, AI, and digital distribution is creating new business models and disrupting traditional underwriting in ways that large incumbent insurers are racing to understand and participate in. Erkan’s combination of investment banking expertise, central bank macroeconomic experience, and — presumably — her networks across global financial regulation, makes her a credible figure for this mandate.

The Tom Barrack Connection: A Detail Worth Noting

Turkish reporting on the appointment has highlighted one additional detail that adds a layer of political and diplomatic complexity: multiple sources, including Medyascope and others, have reported that Erkan’s appointment to Fairfax was facilitated in part by the recommendation of Tom Barrack — the US Ambassador to Ankara and Special Envoy for Syria, and a long-standing associate of Donald Trump’s political network. Barrack, a private equity veteran who founded Colony Capital, has deep roots in both the Middle Eastern investment world and the Trump political orbit. His reported role as a reference for Erkan at Fairfax is not, in itself, surprising — senior appointments at this level frequently involve personal referrals across established networks — but it adds a geopolitical dimension to what might otherwise seem a straightforward executive appointment.

TBMag does not draw conclusions from this connection that the available evidence does not support. We note it because our readers — who include both British financial professionals and members of the Turkish diaspora community — deserve to have the full picture, including the elements that are inconvenient or ambiguous, rather than a curated version that presents only the career highlights.

What This Tells Us About Turkish Financial Talent

The most interesting dimension of the Erkan-Fairfax story, from TBMag’s perspective, is what it reveals about the international mobility and market value of Turkish financial expertise. Erkan’s career — Princeton, Goldman Sachs, First Republic, TCMB, Fairfax — is an extreme case, but it is not an isolated one. The Turkish financial sector has, over the past two decades, produced a generation of internationally educated, English-fluent professionals whose skills and experience are genuinely competitive at the highest levels of global finance.

For the British-Turkish business community, this matters in a specific and practical way. As the UK-Turkey bilateral relationship continues to evolve — through the FTA negotiations, through the COP31 diplomatic context, through the growing integration of Turkish technology companies into European and British markets — the financial professionals who can navigate both contexts are increasingly valuable. Erkan is not moving to London, but her trajectory is a reminder that the pool of Turkish financial talent available for international roles — including roles in British financial services, where Turkish-origin professionals remain underrepresented relative to their qualifications — is deeper and more sophisticated than is commonly recognised.

Her appointment will be watched closely in Turkey, where it will be read very differently by different audiences: as a vindication of her ability by those who believe her TCMB tenure was cut short unfairly, and as a troubling combination of state salary and private sector opportunity by those who remain critical of how her departure was handled. TBMag’s view is that both readings contain elements of truth, and that the honest account requires holding both simultaneously — which is, we recognise, a less comfortable position than either unambiguous celebration or unambiguous condemnation.

What is not in doubt is that Hafize Gaye Erkan, at 46, is back in the global financial arena — and that Prem Watsa, one of the most disciplined investors in the world, believes she is worth having.

AT A GLANCE

• Name:  Hafize Gaye Erkan  ·  Born 1979, Istanbul
• Education:  Bogazici University  ·  Princeton University (PhD, Financial Engineering)
• Career:  Goldman Sachs (Managing Director)  ·  First Republic Bank (Co-CEO & President)  ·  TCMB Governor (June 2023 – February 2024)
• New role:  President, Banking & Fintech  ·  Fairfax Financial Holdings  ·  From late 2025
• Announced:  7 March 2026  ·  Prem Watsa annual shareholder letter
• Fairfax:  Founded 1985 by Prem Watsa  ·  $108bn assets  ·  60,000+ employees  ·  30+ countries  ·  Property, casualty insurance, reinsurance, investment management
• Mandate:  Oversight of Fairfax banking operations  ·  Fintech and insurtech investment strategy
• Reference:  Tom Barrack (US Ambassador to Ankara, Special Envoy for Syria) — per Turkish media reports
• Context:  TCMB post-dismissal salary (approx 750,000 TL/month) expired same month as public announcement