foto: Digital Archaeology / CC BY-NC 2.0 / Flickr/The Meram Express
Turkey is building a new railway to Nakhchivan. A project under U.S. oversight will connect Azerbaijan with Turkey and bypass Russia.
Last week, Turkey announced the start of construction of a rail link from its northeastern province of Kars across the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, seeking to create a transport and logistics advantage for its interests. The railway planned by Turkey will complement the so-called TRIPP (Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity), which will run through southern Armenia and connect Azerbaijan with its enclave of Nakhchivan, which borders Turkey.
The agreement on a transport and energy transit corridor was key to concluding peace agreements. Their finalisation still awaits Armenia and Azerbaijan, two republics of the former USSR that have been at odds for more than 37 years and have fought wars over territory and the Nagorno-Karabakh region, populated predominantly by an Armenian minority.
Turkey Will Build a New Corridor to Consolidate Peace
Turkey’s share of the new Caucasus rail topography consists of a new 224-kilometre route that will connect the Turkish–Azerbaijani border crossing at Dilucu and the capital of Turkey’s easternmost province, Kars. The construction of the railway, with a capacity of 5.5 million passengers and 15 million tonnes of freight per year, was symbolically launched last week by Turkey’s Minister of Transport Abdulkadir Uraloğlu.
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"This corridor will strengthen economic cooperation between Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia and consolidate peace in the region," Minister Uraloğlu said at a press conference, adding that the project will help open borders and normalise diplomatic relations in the South Caucasus and participate in the transit corridor for which the United States has obtained exclusive development rights. It is intended to strengthen economic ties between Azerbaijan and Armenia and also to support trade in energy commodities. For the project, estimated at EUR 2.4 billion, Turkey has succeeded in securing a group of financial institutions, including Japan’s MUFG, Sweden’s EKN, Austria’s export credit agency OeKB and a subsidiary of the Islamic Development Bank.
A Railway Around Turkey’s Highest Mountain Is a Technical Marvel
Minister Uraloğlu said that once all sections of the corridor are completed, including the railway in Nakhchivan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, an important part of a rail route from China to the United Kingdom will be created. At the same time, he described the planned railway in mountainous eastern Anatolia, bypassing the region’s highest mountain, Ararat, as a technical marvel. "A double-track, electrified line with modern protection will be built. It will pass through five tunnels, 19 cut-and-cover tunnels, three viaducts, 10 bridges, 144 underpasses, 27 overpasses and 480 railway culverts."
Azerbaijan is a significant producer of oil and natural gas, and exports of these commodities to the west without the need to use Russian and Ukrainian infrastructure have been blocked for decades by the conflict in the Transcaucasus.
What remains for the region’s transport mosaic is the opening of the once-functional border crossing between Turkey and Armenia on the existing but non-operational line between the Armenian city of Gyumri and the Turkish city of Kars. Turkey closed it as a sanctions and isolation tool against Armenia as the only rail crossing with Armenia after the outbreak of armed conflict with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. A political agreement between the two formerly hostile countries on opening the rail crossing was reached already in May of this year.
Sources: Daily Sabah, The Armenian Report