Bodrum's memory still holds those wooden boats: the hulls that carried the sponge diver down, shaped by a master's hand, ribs bent one by one. That tradition never disappeared; it only grew. Today Turkey's shipyards turn out everything from production motor yachts to steel superyachts beyond eighty metres — and that work is now sold to the world.
The figures say it plainly.
What the Numbers Say
The sector closed 2025 with ship and yacht exports exceeding two billion two hundred million dollars — the highest in its history. The momentum carried into 2026: in the year's first month, exports nearly doubled year-on-year to pass one hundred and sixty-six million dollars. Yalova was the heart of production; to this leading region were added new markets such as Panama and Morocco, and a jump in sales to the United Kingdom. More than eighty active shipyards now operate across the country.
Why Turkey?
Everyone inside the sector knows this is no accident. Superyacht building is a narrow club worldwide; roughly two-thirds of global capacity is carried by Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Turkey's place at that table isn't down to being cheap, but to bringing two things together: a centuries-old mastery of wooden boatbuilding, and the craft that carries it into modern steel. Put another way, the hand that makes the superyacht possible is the grandchild of the hand that built the gulet.
For an owner, this isn't an abstract point of pride. A good shipbuilding country is also a good country for maintenance, wintering and refit. That a yacht can be repaired and kept up where it was built is a quiet but real advantage for its owner.
Gulet and superyacht seem, at first glance, two separate worlds. But both are the work of the same coast, the same hand. One was made to send the sponge diver down, the other to take the guest to sea. A century has passed; the master has not changed.
YACHT MANAGEMENT →