The Turkish Post Corporation, Turkey's largest postal operator, is transforming and renewing to deliver the best possible service to its customers in Turkey and across the world. Not only through strategic collaborations with leading global companies in the world, but also with social responsibility projects and sponsorship. The Turkish Post is maintaining its competitiveness and ambition to be one of the leading companies in the global postal sector.

Thus, the Turkish Post has been intensifying its efforts to reach this goal. As part of these efforts, the corporation had worked extremely hard to secure the convention of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) Congress in Istanbul in 2016. This was not an easy job because before this massive gathering, Turkey was going through a rather difficult time dealing with a number of issues, and as such, convincing the participants that it was safe to hold the congress in Istanbul required an enormous level of perseverance, passion and determination.

With the strong determination of the Turkish Post Corporation, subsequent diplomacy traffic initiated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Turkish Consulates in the world and successful negotiations with the U.N. Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) and the UPU senior team at UPU headquarters, the congress was given a go ahead and planned for Istanbul. This was not only significant as for the first time the Turkish Post Corporation was going to host the event, but it was significant in terms of international solidarity against terrorism. The event contributed a great deal toward the domestic and international reputation and recognition of the Turkish Post. As such, with its all achievements this event could be marked as a significant milestone in the Turkish Post's history.

Although there are many global and non-international logistic companies in Turkey's market, the Turkish Post has the best and the most widespread postal service network. As part of its goal of being accessible from the most remote corners of the country to ensure that people get to connect via postal services, the Turkish Post is everywhere in Turkey. On the other hand, Turkey's location is priceless in terms of connecting the West with the East and the South with the North. In other words, Turkey is the hub for international logistics and connects all parts of the world together.

No other country has this connection, which puts the Turkish Post in a special position. All these advantages appeal to various global companies that are serving in different fields and as such, global companies are looking forward to establishing global partnerships with institutions in Turkey.

A recent example of this has been the agreement between Turkish Cargo, Chinese Cargo Giant ZTO Express and Hong Kong Based PAL Air Ltd. This joint venture was launched in June 2018 and is a very important step forward. However, the most important thing here is to remember that the Turkish Post recently formed a new company PAL Express Ltd., in partnership with Pacific Air (HK). As it is known to all, the Istanbul new airport – at the crossroads of Europe and Asia – will be the largest airport in the world. It is considered as the airport of the future and it will be opened officially on Oct. 29. The Turkish Post has to take advantage of both these developments in a sustainable way to cement its position as the pre-eminent power of logistics.

Whilst all this is going on, the Turkish Post is also working hard to continuously keep up to date with developments in the postal sector and as part of this is doing a lot of work in terms of international e-commerce logistics, digital services and infrastructure transformation within the whole corporation.

Istanbul and therefore the Turkish Post hub at the new airport are, together, the heart of this strategic development planning. Along with the boom of e-commerce volumes across the world, the global courier industry still continues to show extraordinary growth rates.

According to estimations based on the solid revenue realization, both growth and revenue realization is expected to reach $340 billion dollars by 2020 and $400 billion by 2023. In parallel with its deep interior transformation and external growth strategy based on this enormous potential, the Turkish Post is committed to increasing its operational capability and capacity.

To conclude, commitment and the concerted efforts of the Turkish Post has resulted in historic agreements of mutual cooperation with globally known companies and postal administrations around the world. Additionally, the corporation is in great harmony with all governmental institutions while trying to facilitate the daily postal affairs of the people. In line with all this hard work and ongoing efforts, each passing day Turkish Post gets closer to its goal of becoming a global brand in accordance with the vision set by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as well as the 2023 goals of Turkey.

* Employee at Turkish Post, Ph.D. candidate at Yıldırım Beyazıt University