Regional and Economic Impacts of Ports: Comparison of Tekirdağ-the River Rhine

In today's economic dominance of globalization, trade cannot be considered independently of logistics. It is only through advanced transportation networks that these three factors can be brought together in a common place by circulating the raw material, production, consumption triangle around thousands of kilometers. The main factor of transportation and the main unifying agent of transportation networks is maritime transportation. Ports are located at the beginning and end of these logistics activities. This added value created by the harbors also decided on the distribution of today's Western European population. The inland waterway transportation is more economical when viewed commercially. The products that are transported by ship on the River Rhine, and the people who cannot be ignorant of the trade, have significantly increased the population and population density in the region in the last hundred years. When we examine Turkey's province of Tekirdağ, we see a very high population growth rate compared to the rest of the country. When we look at the distribution of the population in the city, a higher population is seen in the regions near the port. These assessments will directly affect the amount of regional development and the impact of the port on this development. In the study, the Rhine River in the Netherlands was firstly evaluated in terms of macro, and then the effect of the port activities of Tekirdağ province on the regional development was investigated.