Turkey has started building a 224-kilometer railway from eastern Kars province to Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave, Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said at a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, Reuters reported.
The line will run from the Dilucu border gate to Nakhchivan and connect with Kars, with a planned capacity of 5.5 million passengers and 15 million metric tons of cargo a year.
Ankara says the project forms part of a South Caucasus transit corridor advanced under a United States-brokered peace agreement signed this month by Armenia and Azerbaijan, which grants the United States exclusive development rights over the route that will pass through southern Armenia.
Reuters reported that the corridor is referred to in government messaging as the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”
Uraloğlu said Turkey secured 2.4 billion euros in green financing for the railway from a group of lenders including MUFG Bank, Sweden’s EKN and Austria’s OeKB export credit agencies as well as a unit of the Islamic Development Bank. He said the corridor aims to open borders and normalize ties in the region.
Iran previously voiced opposition to elements of the corridor laid out in the peace deal.