A controversial decision sparked public debate last week, as the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Hamza Yerlikaya has been appointed as a board member at Turkey’s third-largest state-owned bank, Vakıfbank.
Yerlikaya was a former Olympic wrestler and is now one of the senior advisers of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Although Yerlikaya was to receive three different salaries with his controversial board membership in a bank, it has been recently reported that he also put himself on state payroll due to his past championship, making four different salaries in total.
Yerlikaya has drafted and submitted the “honor salary” proposal which was legislated on 24 June 2008 which introduced monthly salary to World, Europe, and Olympics Champions. Thus, he assigned himself a monthly salary with this law.
He was appointed as one of the senior advisers to Erdoğan in 2015, sparking another public debate and questioning about his qualifications and Erdoğan's decision.
