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The fact that the transport costs directly affect the countries’ economies all around the world and that the transport costs increase depending on the energy resources steered the countries into developing combined transport strategies that will decrease the transport costs. In this study, an assessment is made for the selection of locations of the logistics centers which will contribute to decreasing the transport costs, develop logistics sector strategies in Turkey, and thereby enable to identify the strategies for the fastest, safest, and the most economic transport utilizing integration of modes of transport with each other. Nonetheless, an integrated logistics model which includes freight capacity and selection of the optimum location is proposed for the efficient and useful logistics center. In this logistics model, a freight model, which is a criterion for optimal location selection, has been obtained by using regression analysis. According to this freight model, freight carrying capacity is determined for each alternative region. Optimum location selection has been made utilizing AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process)-VIKOR (Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) method. We aim to contribute to the literature by making systematically estimating variable carrying capacities and by being decisive in the logistics center location selection. The proposed logistics model has been applied for a logistics center to be established, and effective and valid results have been obtained.

Transportation costs are the main parameters directly affecting the country's economy. This parameter is not only increasing day by day due to unsustainable fossil fuels, but also brings heavy burdens to economies. In case of Turkey, logistic strategies had to be considered inevitably. For this purpose, along general comparison made by taking the data of logistic performance index (LPI) issued biennially by World Bank into consideration, Mexico included in the same category in said index has been taken as the sample and then the logistic sector has been analyzed and compared. As a result, it was shown that Mexico and Turkey had poor transport infrastructure, lack of legislation, lack of independent logistics management and lack of independent port authority. In addition to them, it has been seen that the railway infrastructure should be less developed than behind the road infrastructure and the ports should be strengthened with highway-rail connections. Geostrategically, both countries have a similar structure but also have lack of data on the logistics sector. It has been asserted that regions for combined transport in both countries should be identified and logistics areas should be established.

Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.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.