Turkey: Over 500,000 new vehicles in traffic in H1

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA

Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported Wednesday a total of 536,916 road motor vehicles were registered in the first half of this year.

In the six-month period, the number of new road motor vehicles registrations -- including cars, motorcycles, buses, trucks, tractors etc. -- saw an annual decline of 10.8 percent.

"While 76,277 road motor vehicles were withdrawn, 536,916 road motor vehicles were added in January-June period. The total number of road motor vehicles registered increased by 460,639," TurkStat said.

The institute said within over half million new registrations from January to June, cars accounted for 57.9 percent, followed by motorcycles and small trucks with 15.9 percent and 15.7 percent, respectively.

"Within 310,964 cars registered to traffic in January-June period, 43.2 percent of them had an engine size of 1,501-1,600 cc," it said.

Total number of road motor vehicles

According to the official figures, the number of all road motor vehicles registered reached 22,679,584 at the end of June.

"Cars represented 54.3 percent, followed by small trucks 16.4 percent, motorcycles 13.9 percent, tractors 8.2 percent, trucks 3.8 percent, minibuses 2.1 percent, buses 1 percent and special purpose vehicles 0.3 percent," TurkStat said.

"At the end of June, among 12,313,637 registered cars, the share of LPG-fuelled cars was 38.1 percent, followed by diesel-fuelled cars with 36.1 percent and gasoline-fuelled cars with 25.4 percent," it added.

As of June, Turkey's largest city Istanbul had some 4.1 million vehicles in traffic, the capital Ankara had around 1.9 million vehicles and the Aegean province of Izmir had nearly 1.4 million vehicles.

The country's statistical authority will release the next data on road motor vehicles on Sept. 4.