Turkish Airlines launches major Middle East initiative

Turkish Airlines, already a substantial player in the Middle East market, is launching a new wave of routes into the region.

For some time, the Turkish flag carrier has had ambitions to rival the “Middle East 3” (ME3) trio of Emirates Airlines, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways. Turkish is expanding rapidly, notably in Africa, where the Istanbul-based carrier is on record as saying it aims to become the dominant airline on the continent.

The latest initiative is designed to link Middle East cities with several Turkish regional cities and tourism centers such as Antalya, Bodrum and Trabzon; Turkey is a popular holiday destination for Arabs. The services are scheduled to start from June.

The new routes will also allow Arab passengers to bypass the increasingly congested Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul.

Turkey is also attempting to compensate for a sharp drop-off in Western European tourists following a series of terrorist attacks and last summer’s attempted coup in the country.

Turkish will launch 16 weekly flights between Kuwait, together with the five Saudi cities of Jeddah, Riyadh, Al Qassim, Yanbu and Medina to Trabzon. It will also start 13 weekly flights between Jeddah, Riyadh, Kuwait, Amman (Jordan), and the Iraqi cities of Baghdad, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah to Antalya.

Additionally, passengers from Kuwait will also be able to travel directly to Izmir.

Further afield, the German cities of Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and Stuttgart will also be linked for the first time by Turkish to Izmir. Germany has a large expatriate Turkish population.

“We are always looking to provide our passengers with the most convenient and time-efficient way of travel,” Turkish Airlines’ deputy chairman and CEO Bilal Eksi said. “As we move forward, our goal will be to create direct flights from all the markets [in which] we operate globally so that travelers can now fly directly to their destination of choice.”