Turkey is turning its focus to local investors after talks to sell operating rights for an Aegean port to the United Arab Emirates’ AD Ports Group collapsed six months ago.

“We’ve made significant progress in talks with a few Turkish entrepreneurs who may have foreign partners for the operation of the Alsancak port in Izmir,” Transportation Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu told Bloomberg in an interview. “We’re considering both investment and operation for a certain number of years,” he said during a visit to the eastern Turkish city of Igdir on August 22, without elaborating. 

The Alsancak port can receive about 4,000 ships, and can handle the equivalent of around 1.2 million twenty-foot container units a year, according to TCDD, the national railways authority that manages its operations.

Turkey previously started negotiations for a sale to AD Ports Group, controlled by Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured a $51 billion commitment from the UAE in 2023 for various investments in Turkey. So far, few deals have been finalized.

The port has been owned by Turkey’s sovereign wealth fund since 2017 and is operated by TCDD. It was scheduled for privatization in 2004 and put out to tender in 2007. A group of investors including Hutchison Port Holdings and Turkey’s Global Yatirim Holding submitted the top bid of $1.28 billion, but the deal was blocked by a court decision, and the consortium later withdrew.

Uraloglu said the government was also working on plans to integrate the port of Candarli, which lies about 40 nautical miles north of Izmir, with nearby industrial infrastructure and shipyards.