Analysis of Turkey’s airport network structure and centrality in the opening-out period after the first wave of COVID-19: A complex network approach

Abstract

There are a few studies present analyzing air transport structures of the countries, regions, and the world by using complex network theory. Although Turkey has a complex air network with 56 airports, thorough research has not been carried out applying complex network analysis to reveal the structure of the airport network in Turkey yet. Furthermore, the fact that Turkey is a developing economy and the role of air transport in this development is undeniable, and its use as a transit area due to its geopolitical location, together with social and political factors, makes it important to understand this air transport network in detail. Consequently, in this paper, Turkey’s Airport Network (TAN) topology was explored by implementing concepts of complex network theory using domestic and international passenger flight data gathered from FlightRadar during the opening period after the first wave of Covid-19. The average path length and clustering coefficient for connectivity performance and centrality metrics (degree, betweenness, and closeness) were computed and the network correlations were also measured and compared with simulated random, small-world (SW), and scale-free (SF) network models. Also, structural similarities and differences with the air networks of other countries are revealed.