According to the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of Turkey Adil Karaismailoğlu, the construction of a road from Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan has started. Karaismailoğlu noted that it is necessary to build a railway line from Kars to the Dilucu checkpoint at the Nakhchivan border.
"It is necessary to modernize the railway in Nakhchivan and then start constructing a direct railway line from Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan, and thus to ensure railway traffic between Turkey and Azerbaijan directly, and not through Georgia," the minister said.
According to the Turkish side, in the first quarter of 2021, the volume of freight traffic via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway amounted to 154 836 tons or 2 468 wagons; 78 000 tons of cargo was transported in the corresponding period of 2020. Turkey carries out container shipping to Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, as well as Russia and China. According to Turkish statistics, in 2020, the volume of freight traffic via the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway increased by 104%, or 396 778 tons, compared to 2019.
"Baku - Tbilisi - Kars railway has become a new direction of world rail transportation. The trade turnover between Europe and China is about $ 710 billion a year. Countries that cross the middle corridor will benefit immensely from the transportation of goods," he said.
