Hatay Airport and İskenderun Port: Official Figures to September 2026
11/3/2026 · 6 min read
People weighing logistics, trade or tourism investment in Hatay tend to ask two questions: how many passengers and how much freight does Hatay Airport handle today, and how much weight do the ports around İskenderun carry within Türkiye? This article brings together the latest figures from two official sources: the end-September 2026 airport statistics of the State Airports Authority (DHMİ) and the September 2026 cargo and container bulletins of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure's Directorate General of Maritime Affairs, published on 12 October 2026. It was prepared on 3 November 2026; DHMİ's 2026 airport figures are provisional.
Hatay Airport: January–September 2026 (DHMİ)
According to DHMİ's tables, Hatay Airport served 837,235 passengers in the first nine months of 2026: 725,072 domestic and 112,163 international. In the same period of 2025 it served 285,871 (280,626 domestic and 5,245 international); the table shows an annual change of 193%. Aircraft movements rose from 2,362 to 5,509 (133%), and the load figure, which combines baggage, cargo and mail, rose from 2,958 to 8,532 tonnes (188%). Cargo on its own, however, slipped from 37 to 35 tonnes.
For comparison, from the same tables for January–September 2026: Gaziantep 2,337,500 passengers (up 2%), Adana Çukurova 4,019,318 (down 2%), Kahramanmaraş 259,636 (up 7%).
Passenger numbers rose 2.7% across all DHMİ-operated airports and 3.0% for Türkiye as a whole, which reached 193,079,304.
International passengers made up about 13.4% of Hatay's total in the first nine months of 2026 (112,163 ÷ 837,235, our calculation).
İskenderun Regional Port Authority: September 2026 (Ministry)
According to the Ministry's September 2026 cargo bulletin, port facilities within the administrative area of the İskenderun Regional Port Authority handled 5,390,533 tonnes in September. That placed İskenderun third in Türkiye for the month, after Kocaeli (6,900,965 tonnes) and Aliağa (6,648,439 tonnes). The bulletin's chart splits this into roughly 3.24 million tonnes of inbound foreign cargo, 1.47 million tonnes outbound, 0.33 million tonnes of cabotage and 0.35 million tonnes of transit. Türkiye as a whole handled 42,380,097 tonnes in September (down 1.2% year on year) and 412,147,102 tonnes in January–September (up 0.6%). The Ministry's statement of 31 January 2026 also put İskenderun third for the whole of 2025, with 70,905,737 tonnes. For containers, İskenderun was not among the top five port authorities in the September 2026 container bulletin, which gives no separate TEU figure for it.
(Interpretation) At the airport, passenger and aircraft numbers appear to have doubled or tripled on 2025, but the first nine months of 2025 form a low base, and no official statement explaining the rise was opened for this article. The percentages should therefore not be read as demand growth on their own. Cargo remains tiny, about 0.4% of total load, which shows the airport currently works mainly for passengers. The port picture is different: İskenderun accounted for roughly 12.7% of all cargo handled in Türkiye in September 2026 and about 12.8% in 2025 (our calculations). That most of its cargo arrives from abroad fits with the raw-material needs of the region's industry, but the bulletin does not break cargo types down by port authority, so this remains an inference.
DHMİ's 2026 figures are provisional, and DHMİ notes that revisions to earlier months are reflected in the current month's table. The figures are cumulative to the end of September.
Passenger numbers add arrivals and departures, so one traveller making a round trip counts twice. Purpose of visit, length of stay and spending are not in these tables.
The İskenderun Regional Port Authority is not a single port; it covers every port facility in its administrative area, and the bulletin does not list those facilities separately.
The cargo bulletin measures tonnes; it says nothing about the value of the goods, jobs or capacity use. Sub-totals read from the chart are rounded.
The Ministry states in the bulletin that it does not guarantee the information is final or complete; the next cargo bulletin is scheduled for 10 November 2026.
This article is not investment advice and makes no promise of returns or demand. For current and final figures, go directly to the DHMİ and Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure pages; official pages may be updated over time.
DHMİ, Comparative Airport Statistics, end-September 2026 (provisional) passenger, total aircraft, load and cargo tables, accessed 3 Nov 2026.
Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, Directorate General of Maritime Affairs, Cargo Statistics Bulletin, September 2026 (No. Y-076, 12 Oct 2026), accessed 3 Nov 2026.
Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, Directorate General of Maritime Affairs, Container Statistics Bulletin, September 2026 (No. K-076, 12 Oct 2026), accessed 3 Nov 2026.
Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, port cargo-handling record announcement for 2025 (31 Jan 2026), accessed 3 Nov 2026.
From the official data
Hatay Airport: Passenger and Cargo Traffic
According to DHMİ data, Hatay Airport served 288,706 passengers in 2024 and 506,499 in 2025 (+75.4%). In the first eight months of 2026 (provisional data) passenger numbers reached 729,935, +237.3% on the 216,390 of the same period in 2025.
Passengers in the first eight months of 2026 equal 144% of all of 2025: the airport passed the previous year's total in under a year. International passengers were zero at the end of August 2025, 5,245 by the end of September and 28,314 at year-end; in 2026 they reached 95,868 in eight months. The cumulative figures for July and August 2025 are identical (216,390): there are no recorded passengers in August 2025. DHMİ's table does not give the reason; the programme contains runway and apron repair items (TRY 16 billion, 2023–2026), but no causal link between the two is drawn here.
The load item (5,082.7 tonnes) combines baggage, cargo and mail; in 2025 only 48.7 tonnes of it were cargo (1.0%). The airport is thus passenger-driven today; for air-cargo investments (cold chain, e-commerce distribution) current volumes are very low and demand cannot be inferred from these data.
What it means for an investor: the rapid recovery in passenger numbers points to demand being rebuilt for tourism and business-travel services such as hotels, restaurants, car rental and transfers (interpretation). But the data do not say whether passengers are tourists, business travellers or visitors, or how many nights they stay; accommodation investments need a separate demand study.
Limitation: The 2026 figures are DHMİ's “provisional” data and may change. Passenger numbers count arrivals plus departures (one traveller counts twice). Purpose of visit, length of stay and spending are not in this source. No comparison with 2023 or earlier (pre-earthquake) is made here.
According to the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, Turkish ports handled 553,268,303 tonnes in 2025; the İskenderun Regional Port Authority handled 70,905,737 tonnes, third after Aliağa (89,507,150 tonnes) and Kocaeli (83,939,975 tonnes). In the Ministry of Trade's exports-by-province-of-activity table, Hatay ranked 11th in 2023 with USD 5,170 million.
Indicator
Value
Year
Source
İskenderun Regional Port Authority: cargo handled (tonnes)
The İskenderun Regional Port Authority handles 12.8% of the cargo moved through Turkish ports and trails only Aliağa and Kocaeli. This volume shows that Hatay remained one of the country's main cargo gateways even after the earthquake. Hatay's exports fell 11.7% in 2023 to USD 5,170 million; in September 2025 monthly exports rose +11.9% on the same month of the previous year. A single month does not prove an annual recovery; the annual 2024–2025 figures are not in this compilation.
What it means for an investor: port and export volumes are the most concrete official gauges of the scale of demand for warehousing, bonded areas, logistics centres and export-oriented production. But how much of the port tonnage is cargo produced in or destined for Hatay, as opposed to transit, cannot be separated from these data; cargo type and country breakdowns should be queried separately before investing.
Limitation: The port figure is the sum of all ports under the İskenderun Regional Port Authority and has no cargo-type or country breakdown. The export table is based on place of production (province of activity), which differs from head-office-based tables. Annual provincial exports for 2024 and 2025 (the Ministry's relevant file could not be accessed) and the sector breakdown of exports are not in this compilation; September 2025 is a single-month figure.
