Purpose: Ports are the key elements of maritime transportation, which is crucial for world trade. Approximately 180 port facilities are located in Turkey. After 2007, 5 of the ports, which are formerly owned by Turkish Republic Railways Administration (TRRA), are privatized. The aim of the study is to evaluate the performance of these privatized ports by multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach.Design/methodology/approach: The application process is performed by a MCDM model. This model includes both criteria (dry bulk, liquid bulk, general cargo, container, RO-RO capacity, total port area, total berth, total berths length and depth) and alternatives (Mersin, Samsun, Bandirma, Iskenderun and Derince Ports). It determines the weights of the criteria by entropy and ranks the alternatives by ARAS and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods.Findings: The results of entropy, ARAS and TOPSIS methods are compared. According to these results, “container” is the most important criteria while Mersin port has the best performance.Originality/value: In the literature, most of the studies about this subject were analyzed by data envelopment analysis (DEA) and there are no studies had been taken into consideration ports that are owned by TRRA, in Turkey. Moreover, few of these studies used integrated MCDM models, and this is the first study that integrates entropy, ARAS and TOPSIS methods in this field.

After 50 years of rapid development, today's aquaculture industry has become one of the driving forces of economic growth in many countries thanks to the increasing aquaculture production. However, less attention has been given to its growing global market demand and its contribution to relevant countries’ trade potential. Turkey has achieved significant success in aquaculture production dominated by Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Sea Bass (Dicentrarchus labrax), and Sea Bream (Dicentrarchus labrax)species thanks to its geographical and biodiversity advantages. Thereby, Turkey has an exporting advantage in the face of increasing global seafood consumption demand. In this paper, we focus on the target market selection of these priority products to support the exporting potential of Turkey. Therefore, this is a multicriterion problem, and this paper aims to provide forecasting about target markets based on qualitative and quantitative criteria by combining fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods. Seven criteria as trade balance, consumption, distance, average tariff, ease of doing business, non-tariff requirement and logistics performance index were chosen for evaluating the target markets. According to FAHP results, the trade balance criterion has the most significant effect while the distance criterion has least effect on the decision problem for ranking the target countries. According to these seven criteria, Japan is the best target market for Trout and Sea Bass while Russian Federation is the best for Sea Bream.

Fisheries and aquaculture industry, which provides a continuous and high-return market advantage to potential countries, is also one of the priority industries for Turkey. Although Turkey has important advantages with its geographic position and bio-diversity, the industry's contribution to foreign trade is not at an acceptable level. Accordingly, it is important to evaluate the capture fishery and aquaculture products, which provide the best contribution to the foreign trade of Turkey. Thus, the present paper aims to provide foreign trade executives with an intuition about the most appropriate products to invest in and contributing products to Turkish foreign trade within the scope of market strategies. Entropy-WASPAS, which is a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making method, is used for evaluating the contribution of fishery and aquaculture products to Turkish foreign trade. This model includes both criteria (production, import quantity, import value, export quantity, export value) and alternatives (trout, sea bream, sea bass, sprat, atlantic bonito, anchovy, horse mackerel, pilchard, sea snail, prawn, cuttle fish, mussel). Entropy is used to determine the criteria weights, and WASPAS is applied for ranking the fishery and aquaculture products. According to the results, export value is the most important criteria while Sea Bream is found as the most significant product for Turkey’s foreign trade.

Bilişim ve eğitim alanında yaşanan gelişmelerle karşımıza çıkan e-öğrenme, öğrenci merkezli, birçok avantajı bulunan, çağdaş bir eğitim ve öğretim sistemi olarak tanımlanabilmektedir. Günümüzde e-öğrenme sistemi ülkemizdeki birçok üniversite tarafından kullanılmaktadır ve bu durum beraberinde rekabeti getirmiştir. E-öğrenme sisteminde başarılı olunması ve memnuniyetin sağlanması için e-öğrenme öğrenci gereksinimleri ve teknik gereksinimlerin karşılanması gerekmektedir. E-öğrenme sisteminin öneminden hareketle bu çalışmada Bilim, Sanayi ve Teknoloji Bakanlığı’nın Üniversitelerarası Yenilikçilik ve Girişimcilik Endeksi sıralamasına giren ve uzaktan eğitim hizmeti veren otuz devlet üniversitesi e-hizmet kalitesi bakımından değerlendirilmiştir. Uygulamada Kalite Fonksiyon Göçerimi, Bulanık Doğrusal Regresyon, 0-1 Hedef Programlama ve Entropi-Ağırlıklı Uzaklık Metriği yöntemleri kullanılmıştır. Uygulama sonucunda söz konusu yöntemler kullanılarak üniversitelerin sıralanması sağlanmıştır. Modelin üniversitelerin e-öğrenme sistemlerinin performans değerlendirme konusunda kullanılabilecek etkin bir karar verme aracı olması ve eğitim sektörüne katkıda bulunması beklenmektedir.