The economists’ forecast for the key interest rate at the end of the year was 40 percent.

Last month, the bank raised the rate by 500 basis points to 30 percent.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan performed one of his trademark policy reversals after winning the general election in May to secure another five-year term.

The election came during Turkey’s worst economic crisis in decades — one that analysts universally blamed on Erdoğan’s unorthodox conviction that high interest rates contribute to inflation.

Erdoğan previously called high rates “the mother and father of all evil” and spent years pushing the central bank to lower borrowing costs to speed up economic growth.