Turkey-Kazakhstan railway agreement to bolster freight transportation
Türkiye and Kazakhstan have signed a significant railway cooperation deal aimed at strengthening the Middle Corridor's competitiveness and boosting freight transport capacity and service quality. This agreement, finalized during Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s recent visit to Türkiye, includes launching regular block train services between the two countries, increasing freight volumes on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line, and facilitating two-way cargo movement between China, Europe, and Africa.
The partnership also focuses on enhancing multi-modal infrastructure, implementing competitive tariffs to attract more freight operators, streamlining customs and administrative procedures, and collaboration on digitalization efforts such as paperless transport documentation and real-time tracking of containers and rolling stock. These measures aim to improve the Middle Corridor’s efficiency and competitiveness, strengthen Türkiye's and Kazakhstan’s roles in global logistics, and deepen regional economic integration.
Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, Turkish Transport and Infrastructure Minister, stated that competitive tariffs will be implemented to attract more freight operators. He also mentioned that regular block train services will be launched between Turkey and Kazakhstan. The agreement was made public by the state-run Anadolu Agency, and it is part of a broader set of 20 agreements signed during the 5th Meeting of the Türkiye-Kazakhstan High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council, covering energy, AI, healthcare, education, and more.
Equipment transfer, know-how sharing, simplified customs procedures, and the wider use of digital tools in transport documentation are among the focus areas of the agreement. The freight volume transported via the Middle Corridor surged by 60% in 2024, reaching 4.5 million tons, and with this cooperation, it is projected to exceed 10 million tons by 2030. The deal reflects Kazakhstan’s commitment to expanding infrastructure cooperation and supporting Turkish investment, as Kazakh investments in Türkiye currently exceed $2.5 billion.
Both sides hailed the agreement as a milestone in strategic logistics cooperation. This railway cooperation deal is expected to boost the global logistics roles of both Turkey and Kazakhstan, support multi-modal infrastructure development, and may deepen regional economic integration.
The partnership between Türkiye and Kazakhstan extends to finance, with the aim of implementing competitive tariffs to attract more freight operators. This collaborative initiative, under the railway cooperation deal, also includes facilitating digitalization efforts such as paperless transport documentation and real-time tracking, with the objective of strengthening Türkiye's and Kazakhstan’s roles in global logistics.
