Turkey's logistics impact compared to the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium

Developed countries around the world give great importance to the logistics sector. Most of the countries have completed the transformation from the transportation to the logistic sector. Therefore, in order to achieve an idea about countries' logistics infrastructures, the World Bank has started publishing the Logistics Performance Index every two years since 2007. The most current publication was distributed in 2016. In addition to providing information regarding the logistics sector of the countries, this index also provides investment information and opportunities of the countries. When determining the country's ranking, the index considers six key criteria (customs, follow-up and monitoring, logistic competition, timing, infrastructure and logistic competition). In the study, first of all, Spearman's rank correlation method was used to determine which of the six main criteria published by World Bank is the most influential. Later on in this paper, the ports considered as Turkey's logistics areas were compared to the logistics system of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany where they conducted on-site surveys. Countries selected for comparison have the best logistics areas in the Europe and are among the first countries in the Logistics Performance Index published in 2014. The existing Turkish ports have been compared with these countries and efforts have been made to identify the gaps of Turkey in the logistics sector and suggestions and recommendations have been made.