A study on a hub port planning in Turkey and a case study: Aegean region

Turkey has gained more importance because of the globalization, its geo-political position andits growing relationships with other countries in Asia, Europe, Middle Asia, America andMiddle East. Turkey has become the heart of the commerce and migration roads since it is abridge among the continents. Therefore it is unavoidable to develop a strategy to improve thesituation of national ports for the international trade.The 25 % of the world?s container traffic uses the Mediterranean corridor. In this research theaim is to study on the hub port which can get share from the world container traffic, especiallyfrom transshipment, taking the advantage of their location in the East Mediterranean.The Izmir Alsancak Harbor is decided to be analyzed in detail because of its location and itstrade capacity and also this port could easily be a competitor of the Piraeus port whenevaluated the transshipment ports which have a very big contribution to the national economy.Aegean region and Izmir have been analyzed socio-economically and the zmir Alsancakport?s geographic location, hinterland data, foreign trade and the countries to which the tradesare performed have been determined. The SWOT analysis has been performed for this portand two different port scenarios are generated according to the results of this analysis.The difficulties occurred during the collection of data which was basic for this researchshowed how important it is to gather and keep the data so that anybody could reach whenneeded. It is very important to keep the knowledge for all evaluation, to enlighten the future.A new algorithm is also presented here in order that a software program can be generated tokeep the following data regarding activities happened in a port; the port information, the shipinformation, traffic information and the container cargo information.A hub port which would be developed using the Turkey?s advantages and which can provide aqualified service with the world standards, would definitely contribute a great contribution toTurkey?s national income. Moreover, this would increase the country?s economical power inthe global world.Key words: The port of zmir Alsancak, foreign trade, port statistics, container terminals, portplanning.JURY:1. Doç. Dr. Esin ÇEV K (Supervisor) Date: 15.11.20052. Prof. Dr. Yalçın YÜKSEL Page: 1503. Prof. Dr. Ayşen ERG N4. Prof. Dr. Sedat KAPDAŞLI5. Doç. Dr. Hayrullah AĞACÇIOĞLU