Turkish Cargo

Turkish Cargo is not a company. It is the cargo brand of Türk Hava Yolları A.O. — Turkish Airlines — and the distinction explains most of what is unusual about it. The airline itself dates to 1933, when it began as a five-aircraft state carrier, and it carried freight in passenger holds for decades before anyone thought to give that activity its own name. The Turkish Cargo brand was created in 2000 as a restructuring of an operation that already existed, which is why sources disagree about the founding year depending on whether they are dating the airline or the brand. That lineage also explains the operating model: unlike the standalone freighter operators it now competes with, Turkish Cargo was built on top of a passenger network rather than assembled independently of one, and it still draws a large share of its capacity from that network.

The commercial consequence is reach. Turkish Airlines flies to more countries than any other airline, and cargo inherits the whole map: Turkish Cargo reports serving over 340 destinations across roughly 130 countries, of which around 115 are direct cargo destinations reached by freighter rather than by belly hold. The dedicated freighter fleet is modest against that footprint — roughly 19 to 24 aircraft depending on the reporting date, a mix of Airbus A330-200Fs and Boeing 777Fs — with five Airbus A350Fs on order for delivery from 2027. Everything funnels through SMARTIST, the cargo terminal that opened at Istanbul Airport in February 2022, occupying around 205,000 square metres with annual capacity near 2.2 million tonnes, roughly 1,500 cargo operations a day, 17,000 bulk cargo positions and 2,000 unit load device positions. A second phase, targeted for 2027 to 2028, would expand the footprint to roughly 340,000 square metres and capacity to about 4.5 million tonnes. The terminal holds TAPA FSR A security certification, and in 2019 Turkish Cargo became the first airline to hold three IATA CEIV certifications simultaneously.

The scale-up has been genuine rather than promotional. In 2024 the carrier moved just over 2 million tonnes of cargo and mail, up 20.6 percent on the 1.66 million tonnes carried in 2023, and ranked third globally by freight tonne-kilometres with a 5.7 percent share of the world market. Cargo revenue rose to 15.4 percent of Turkish Airlines' total revenue in 2024 from about 12 percent the year before, reaching $3.4 billion in 2025. That trajectory continued into 2026: first-half cargo revenue climbed 44.1 percent to $2.3 billion, and cargo and mail carried in the January-July period rose 12 percent to 1.36 million tonnes. Analysts have noted the structural reason this matters to the parent airline — air cargo demand and passenger demand do not move in step, so the freight business acts as a natural hedge against weakness on the passenger side rather than simply as an ancillary revenue line. Turkish Airlines has committed to an infrastructure investment programme exceeding 100 billion Turkish lira, including the SMARTIST expansion and a dedicated e-commerce complex opening in 2026, a signal that the group treats express and e-commerce parcel volume as the growth segment worth building fixed capacity for. Maalbardaar tracks and clears Turkish Cargo air waybills for Pakistani importers and exporters alongside ocean shipments on the same dashboard.