Potential Effects of Logistics Clusters: The Case of Turkish Freight Villages

Freight Villages (FV) are logistics clusters in which all activities related with freight transportation are realized. Various operators conduct business under one roof in FVs. Coordination and collaboration are the essential part for creating harmony to achieve sustainability. The establishment of such facilities in Turkey has been realized in late 2000s. In this paper, the aim is to provide a broad overview of the FVs in Turkey and shed light into their potential for the future. To do so site visits to all existing operational public FVs and a private FV have been made, where interviews with the management units have been conducted and comparisons to global counterparts have been made. As a result of these, it has been observed that currently, FVs in Turkey are overwhelmed due to lack of coordination and collaboration. However, also light has been shed into possible alternative working principles for Turkish FVs, and it has been showed that if coordination and collaboration could be realized, significant positive effects can be achieved in terms of different aspects regarding sustainability and social equity.