Turkey’s aviation sector aims to carry around 170 million domestic and international passengers by the end of 2014, the country’s transport minister has told an Istanbul aviation conference.
Speaking on Friday at the ‘Aviation Leadership Summit’ of the Association of European Airlines, Lutfi Elvan noted that Turkey’s share of air passengers increased to 2.4% globally and to 8.7% in Europe in 2013, saying they expected "the number of air passengers to increase up to 167 million at the end of this year."
Even more passengers will use Istanbul as a hub, the minister said, with the opening of the third airport on October 29, 2017.
"The third airport will rank first in world with 150 million passengers annually. We are planning to open the airport with the capacity for 80 million passengers and extend it to 150 million step-by-step," Elvan said.
Elvan added that the Turkish civil aviation sector grew 3.5 times annually while Europe's aviation hub – London Heathrow – achieved only 3.4 percent growth in 2013 with 72.3 million passengers, according to Turkey's leading aviation magazine Kokpit.
Turkish civil aviation-sector growth is above the European average, Elvan said, adding that Turkey broke records in developing its flight network via dual agreements over the last 11 years, increasing the number of agreed countries from 81 to 162.
Breaking a record in bilateral agreements, Turkey has become the country with the most rapidly developing flight network, Elvan said.
"While there were 81 bilateral agreements in 2003, today this number has increased to 162.
“Now, we fly to 236 points in 106 different countries. The number of passenger aircrafts increased from 162 to 422. The number of active airports was 26 in 2003; this has increased to 53 currently," Elvan noted.
"Sector turnover increased from $2.2 billion in 2003 to $23.8 billion today,” he added.
Saying that in 2003 Turkey ranked seventh in a list of European countries by air passenger numbers with 151 million travellers, Elvan told the conference that the country now ranked fifth.
Another attendee, Turkey’s deputy Europe minister Alaattin Buyukkaya, stated that the target of EU membership was one of the main motivations for the country’s transport policies and for taking decisions to combine safety, security and comfort.  
The Association of European Airline’s CEO, Athar Husain Khan, noted that the European aviation sector contributed 452 billion euros ($579 billion) per year to the European economy, carrying 820 million passengers and providing 11.7 million people with employment.
The summit will continue with discussion panels on shaping Europe's aviation policy and wide-ranging debates on current aviation topics, attended by representatives from the 30 most prominent AEA members as well as politicians from the EU and leading figures from the aviation sector.