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After the 24th of January 1980, the Turkish economy had undergone a significant transformation by which inward-oriented and protective import substitution policies had been replaced by outward-oriented and export-based industrialisation and growth strategies (Töngür & Taymaz, 2017). The main characteristics of this transformation composed of liberalisation of the financial sector, opening to foreign markets and integration into international economy (Yeldan, 2016). The government engaged in contractionary fiscal and monetary policies to suppress domestic demand and real wages and kept their priority to increase exports by implementing various incentive and subsidy tools (Doğruel & Doğruel, 2017; Orhangazi, 2020; Soydan, 2018; Yeldan, 2016). As a result of the experienced transformation, Turkey suffered from economic instability and fragility in the post-1980 period (Soydan, 2018). The average annual growth rate decreased from 5.65% in the 1960s to 4.10% in the 1980s (Taymaz & Voyvoda, 2017; World Bank, 2021).

The objective of this study is to propose a trustworthy, valid and consistent methodological approach for measuring the efficiency of a logistics platform, where an entire country constitutes a logistic platform. Traditional Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is found to be an appropriate tool – if its weaknesses are eliminated. DEA results are highly influenced by the choice of appropriate inputs and outputs variables, but the method itself does not provide guidance for their identification. The authors therefore propose to integrate traditional DEA by combining the Delphi technique with the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, which will assist in identifying proper, consistent input/output variables, evaluated by their relevance. The proposed framework allows the performance evaluation of the selected platform’s element or elements. It is thus a useful decision support tool for enterprises (private, public, both) that are managing logistics platforms and trying to improve their productivity in order to sustain or improve their position on the competitive market. This methodology allows comparative efficiency analyses to be estimated for similar countries. The presented methodology on one hand enables tailor-made solutions, but on the other hand is very general, and, with minor adjustments, can be applied by a variety of firms and industries. It can be applied in private sector firms in production and service industries, to analyse the relative performance of diverse logistics and non-logistics services, and in public profit or non-profit organisations.