War is raging in many of Turkey's neighboring countries, and soaring energy prices have pushed inflation in the country to more than 85 percent.

But the semi-public airline Turkish Airlines feels no crisis.

The numbers that CEO Ahmet Bolat recently reported for the third quarter are more of a show of power: net profit after nine months of $2.3 billion is almost five times that of Lufthansa's EUR 484 million.

Although Lufthansa booked almost twice as much revenue as Turkish Airlines from January to September with more machines and personnel: 24 billion euros instead of 13.7 billion dollars.

Andreas Mihm

Business correspondent for Austria, Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey based in Vienna.

  • Follow I follow

Calculated over the year, Istanbul expects 75 million passengers and $18 billion in revenue, which would be a record.

Air freight is also showing strong growth.

If things go according to plan, annual earnings could end up being $4 billion based on a net return on sales of 16.5 percent.

That makes shareholders and employees happy.

Each of the 72,000 employees received an annual bonus of $2,800 last week.

The people of Istanbul, who have won numerous awards for their customer friendliness, have come out of the pandemic stronger: "It really is a success story," says airline boss Ahmet Bolat in a good mood to visitors from Germany at dinner in Istanbul.

And he has a much bigger appetite.

"Next year we will expand our capacity by 17 percent worldwide and by 20 percent in Europe." A declaration of war on the competition.

After guests of Turkish origin in Germany complained about high prices, discount offers and more flights from the low-cost subsidiary Anadolu are now being discussed for 2023, the election year in Turkey.

Turkish Airlines uses the advantage of being able to fly to as many airports in Germany as you want.

There are currently eleven.

A mechanical engineer as chief pilot

For almost ten months, the qualified mechanical engineer Ahmet Bolat has been CEO of the airline, 49 percent of which belongs to the Turkish sovereign wealth fund, which in turn is overseen by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It was anything but agreed that Bolat would one day get the top job.

But then predecessor Mehmet Ilker Aycı surprisingly (and, as those in the know want to know, not entirely voluntarily) resigned from office.

The 50-year-old was followed by Bolat, who is now 63 years old.

Not exactly a makeover.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan knows what he has in him, professionally and otherwise. Bolat has been a member of the Turkish Airlines management team for 17 years, since 2012 as Chief Investment and Technology Officer.

His team has bought or leased 550 aircraft for the company.

He traveled internationally to forge alliances - as long as they seemed advantageous to Turkey.

The closer cooperation with Lufthansa, which was considered ten years ago, was not one of them.

Today, Bolat beamingly reports on good contacts and relationships with Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr: "He's a nice guy."

The almost unstoppable rise of the Star Alliance member Turkish Airlines to one of the largest airlines in the world is also the work of Bolat.

No airline knows more destinations: 128 states, 321 cities, 326 airports.

Despite all his cosmopolitanism, Bolat appears as a down-to-earth guy when he talks about his family and grandchildren or his great love for Istanbul, where the man, who was born in Konya in Central Anatolia, ended up in the first year of his life: "I'm very proud of Istanbul."

Nevertheless, he spent 20 years of his life abroad.

Those were the years that historians describe today as a time of liberalization and the political and economic stagnation that followed.

Like many top managers in Turkish business, Bolat studied in the United States.

From 1985 to 1988 he earned money and merits as an assistant and assistant professor at the University of Michigan.