Thread by @canokar

Turkey has a controversial new Central Bank Governor, Murat Uysal.

He’s about to get a lot more controversial. His entire English Masters thesis was plagiarised and this thread will walk you through how he copied and pasted it all.

In the interests of me not plagiarising, the first person to notice this was @fkkizilca, although he pointed out paragraphs that were taken from one article. It turns out the entire thing was nabbed from three articles. Two of which were written by former Turkish CB staff...

@fkkizilca The three articles were as follows: Mishkin (2000), “Inflation Targeting in Emerging Market Countries”, Kadıoğlu et al (2000), “Inflation Targeting in Developing Countries” and Altınkemer (2001), “How Did They Manage the Floating Crisis?”.

@fkkizilca Links for all three are here:

Mishkin - pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4467/ce86d3444…

Kadıoğlu et al - core.ac.uk/download/pdf/7…

Altınkemer - citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/downlo…

@fkkizilca You can find Governor Murat Uysal’s thesis if you go to tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerke… and search his name. You need to download the PDF from 2001. The English summary is at the back so scroll down to the end.

@fkkizilca So let’s start. The opening of the English part of Central Bank Governor’s masters thesis is straight up ripped from Mishkin. The language is authoritative and compelling. That’s because it’s entirely Mishkin’s words.

@fkkizilca The new Governor of the Turkish Central Bank keeps lifting from Mishkin for a while. Note that this is word for word and there are no footnotes or citations. Mishkin is in the bibliography but this is not a great start.

It's about to get worse.

@fkkizilca The new Governor moves to another article, this time by Kadıoğlu et al, three authors who all worked for the Central Bank at the time.

I do wonder whether any of them remain because that would be AWKWARD.

@fkkizilca The next few pages are pure copy and paste from the Kadıoğlu article. Take a look yourself – after a while I got bored screenshoting.

The Governor apparently did not get bored of copying and pasting.

@fkkizilca More from Kadığolu et al. This goes on for a few pages. Note that their article is at least cited in the bibliography but there are no footnotes – even if there was, half of the article is completely lifted word for word.

We're talking about 7 pages. Word. For. Word.

@fkkizilca Now we get the most egregious nabbing. Altınkemer, at the time also an employee at the Central Bank, IS NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN THE BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Very harsh. It would be incredible if she is still at the Bank but I don’t think she is. Let me know if you can track down her CV.

@fkkizilca Altınkemer is fully plagiarised for another few paragraphs. And then we’re back to Mishkin to deliver the coup de grace and conclusion. If I were Mishkin, I would be very miffed at the new Governor of the Turkish Central Bank.

@fkkizilca In any other country, this kind of plagiarism would lead to resignations.

It would be a front page scandal. In full capitals.

I doubt very much whether it will even be news in Turkey.

@fkkizilca SERIOUSLY, THIS IS UTTERLY CRAZY. The markets talk about Turkey’s Central Bank credibility but here we have a thesis by its new Governor that was simply CTRL-C, CTRL-V from three separate articles.

@fkkizilca Meanwhile, the Turkish lira and the broader Turkish economy may well get battered this week.

It is disheartening to know that the man at the helm thought that this kind of academic fraud was in any way OK.

It’s not and it’s a deep shame.

@fkkizilca Central Bank authority was shredded by the decision to fire the Governor, supposedly an independent actor.

That credibility is surely now even further in tatters at a time when the entire country needs it more than ever.

@fkkizilca A fantastic extra catch from Ker here. Look at the thesis supervisor.

https://twitter.com/keremiko1/status/1148120858327703552?s=20

@fkkizilca Some noting that this is sort of normal for Turkey.

Imagine a brain surgeon carrying out an operation on a loved one and hearing they had stolen their thesis just as they readied their scalpel.

Well, this is an entire nation's economy and the scalpel is about to be plunged in.