With its eyes set on LOT and TAP, Turkish Airlines aims to become Europe’s most European airline

Turkish Airlines has steadily expanded its network in Europe over the past decade but now it intends to take its expansionistic conduct a step further with acquisitions in some of the continent's medium-sized airlines. It is in negotiations with LOT Polish Airlines to purchase a shareholding and it has shown preliminary interest to participate in the planned privatisation of TAP Portugal. Turkish has already one of largest networks in Europe and its new strategy to complement its strong organic expansion with mergers and acquisitions spells more bad news for Europe's legacy airlines that have not been able to match Turkish Airlines' high growth in recent years. Turkish Airlines has openly stated it aims to be the world's largest carrier.

The Istanbul Ataturk-based airline has consistently outpaced the traffic growth of its European full service counterparts since 2003 and has posted growth rates well above the average of the Association of European Airlines (AEA) members.