Turkey has sacked the governor of its central bank, Murat Uysal and replaced him with a former finance minister.

This was made known in a presidential decree published in the official gazette on Saturday after the Turkish lira reached record lows, AFP reports.

Uysal had only been in the role since July 2019 after his predecessor was also sacked by decree.

Naci Agbal was named as the new central bank governor and no reason was provided in the decree for why Uysal was removed from office.

However, Uysal was given the role after disagreements between the previous governor, Murat Cetinkaya, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over cutting interest rates.

Erdogan has long railed against high-interest rates and last Saturday, said Turkey was fighting against a “devil’s triangle of interest rates, exchange rates and inflation”.

Over the past few months, the lira has hit multiple historic lows against the US dollar and was at 8.52 to the greenback late Friday.

Markets are worried over persistently high inflation, which remains in double-digits, and a sharp drop in foreign currency reserves.

There was hope last month the central bank would hike the main interest rate because of the weak lira, but markets were disappointed when it was kept unchanged.