Alpaslan Çakar, chair of the Board of Directors of the Banks Association of Türkiye, answered questions about the fund investigation at a press meeting titled “Financing the Transformation: Türkiye on the Road to COP31,” attended by members of the TBB Board of Directors and International Energy Agency President Fatih Birol.
Responding to a question about whether the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye’s decision to raise the 4.5% growth limit for SME loans to 5% was linked to the fund investigations, Çakar said the issue involving the funds concerned a more limited area and primarily involved individuals.

Çakar said work on SME loans had been under way for some time and noted that businesses, particularly SMEs, were experiencing difficulties accessing liquidity. He said large companies did not face a problem of the same scale in accessing liquidity and described the change to the credit growth limit as an expected step.
Emphasizing that the regulation in question was unrelated to the fund investigation, Çakar said decisions aimed at easing liquidity had been taken before the investigation and that the latest regulation could be viewed as a continuation of those decisions.

Impact on the banking sector
Assessing the impact of the fund investigations on the banking sector, Çakar said they did not expect the sector to be negatively affected. He said money leaving the market entered the banking sector, meaning it remained within the system.