Turkey plans to become a "logistics superpower" and build a railway to Azerbaijan
Turkey will increase investments in the country's transport infrastructure in order to become a global logistics superpower in the coming years, he said in Interview to Anadolu Agency Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoglu.
“We have planned our rail networks according to feasibility studies, we will become the world's logistics superpower when we build infrastructure with our investments,” the official said.
He added that the coming years will be years of railways, which will link the ports of Iskenderun, Mersin, Filyos and Alsancak into a single network, as well as Chandarli in Izmir.
“We will increase the capacity of the Divrigi-Kars line from 5 million tons to 20 million tons,” Karaismayiloglu said, adding that the cost of logistics as a result of infrastructure reforms will fall below 10% of the price of goods.
Among other things, Turkey intends to build a railway that will connect the country's territory with Azerbaijan.
"We are planning to build a railway in the direction of Nakhichevan," said the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure.
The railway to the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, which is an exclave of Azerbaijan and cut off from it by the territory of Armenia, according to Karaismayiloglu, was decided to build after the latest events in the region.
In 2020, an intergovernmental Azerbaijani-Turkish Memorandum of Understanding was signed on the Kars - Ygdir - Nakhichevan railway project.
Under the terms of the agreement concluded in November 2020 following the results of the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan received the right to create a transport corridor linking the main territory of the country with Nakhichevan. At the same time, the Armenian authorities undertook to guarantee the safety of transport links along this corridor, which will be controlled by Russian border guards.