Turkey’s currency tumbled dramatically over the weekend as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sacked the head of the country’s central bank.

Naci Agbal, who had been credited as playing a key roll in pulling the lira back from historic lows, was replaced in a surprise move on Saturday. Agbal’s removal marks the first change in the central bank’s governorship in under three years.

Agbal was appointed in November and had been raising interest rates to combat an inflation rate that ran above 15%. Two days after increasing Turkey’s interest rate by 200 basis points, Agbal was replaced on Saturday by Sahap Kavcioglu, a former banker and lawmaker who shares Erdogan’s opinion that high interest rates lead to increased inflation.

The change in central bank leadership caused local and foreign investors, who had been enticed by Turkey’s 19% interest rate, to pull their money out of the country. Lira fell as much as 14% against the euro following Kavcioglu’s appointment, and the Turkish stock market in Istanbul shed over 9%.

Every sector was badly hit, with financial stocks leading the selloff down 9.29% on Monday trading. Industrials, the least impacted sector overall, fell 6.43%.

Government bonds also suffered a record daily drop on Monday, wiping out the gains made during Naci Agbal’s tenure.

Jason Tuvey, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, told the Financial Times at the time of Agbal’s firing that the leadership change might spark a currency crisis in Turkey.

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“Erdogan’s move leaves little doubt that all of the power in Turkey rests with him, and this will result in rate cuts,” Tuvey wrote in a research note, warning that lower interest rates would only worsen Turkey’s inflation problem.

In a statement on Sunday, the central bank said it "will continue to use the monetary policy tools effectively in line with its main objective of achieving a permanent fall in inflation".