ANKARA

 Turkish Airlines will add seven new foreign direct flight destinations from Turkey’s capital Ankara beginning from Oct. 1st, 2015, officials said Thursday.

The head of Ankara Chamber of Industry Nurettin Ozdebir told Anadolu Agency that Turkish Airlines had promised to add, from Ankara, 27 flights per week to seven new foreign destinations.

“Turkish Airlines currently are flying directly from Ankara to Moscow and Dusseldorf,” he said. “Beginning from Oct. 1st, the airline will fly directly from Ankara to Frankfurt, Vienna, Baku, Brussels, London, Tehran, and Amsterdam.”

Ozdebir said that he had participated Wednesday in a meeting with, among others, Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek, director general of Civil Aviation Bilal Eksi and Ankara Esenboga Airport director Nuray Demirer.

He said that at the meeting it was decided that Turkish Airlines and its subsidiary, Anadolu Jet, would add direct flights from Ankara to seven new foreign destinations in 2016 and to another five in 2017.

Ozdebir said that, in 2016, Turkish Airlines will begin flying directly from Ankara to Berlin, Hamburg, Koln, Stuttgart, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Paris. In 2017, flights will go from Ankara to Munich, Batumi, Erbil (northern Iraq), Bagdad and Jeddah.

He added that every year, about 850,000 people fly from Ankara to foreign destinations using Istanbul as a transit point. Each year, the number of travelers in this situation rises between 15 to 20 percent.