Evaluation of international transportation activities within the scope of the European green deal: A study on Türkiye

Logistics is a strategic area that connects individuals, societies, countries, and regions, playing a key role in the economic development of these structures. The increasing production volume after World War II and globalisation, which has been accepted as a mainstream economic policy since the second half of the 1900s, have paved the way for attention to the logistics sector. Factors such as the use of fossil fuel-based vehicles and equipment in transportation processes, the damage caused to nature by infrastructure investments, and high emission release in transportation activities have brought logistics activities to the centre of climate crisis combat programs. The European Green Deal is one of the leading programmes in this regard. This agreement expresses the goal of the European continent to be carbon-neutral by 2050 and the strategic and holistic transformation of the European society, biodiversity and economic structure based on environmental sensitivities. Considering the current relationship between the Turkish economy, its politics, and society with European communities and institutions, adapting to this transformation process is of strategic importance for the Turkish economy. There are limited studies in the literature that address the Green Deal within the scope of the international transportation and logistics ecosystem. For this reason, the aim of this study is to evaluate the European Green Deal within the context of the international transportation and logistics sector. As a result of the literature review, 8 Green Deal compliance criteria focused on the logistics sector and international transportation were identified. Questionnaires compatible with Fuzzy AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS analyses were filled in completely by 16 experts. First, the importance weights and rankings of the criteria were determined using the Fuzzy AHP method. This analysis revealed that emission management (K8) was the criterion with the highest importance weight. This criterion was followed by clean energy and efficient resource management (K2), technical qualifications and certificates (K3), pollution management and recycling (K6), green logistics activities (K5), environmental policies and transparency (K4), internal and external stakeholder relations (K7) and environmental management system (K1) criteria. In the next step, based on these rankings and importance weights, Fuzzy TOPSIS analysis was used to find out the most compatible transportation alternatives. As a result of this analysis, the most compatible transportation mode was found to be air transportation (A3). This alternative was followed by rail transportation (A4) and maritime transportation (A2), respectively whereas the least compatible transportation mode was found to be road transportation (A1).