Eurasianet says an inaugural freight train carrying goods from Turkiye’s western Mediterranean shores arrived in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent over the weekend.
Citing a statement released by the Uzbek state-run railway company, Eurasianet says a train pulling 40 carriages loaded with household appliances and refrigeration equipment was met by a welcoming committee following a trip that saw it travel through Iran and Turkmenistan.
The four-nation, 4,500-kilometer route was devised jointly by the state railways companies of Uzbekistan and Turkiye.
This trip is reportedly fruit of discussions at the Organization of Turkic States heads of state summit held in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on November 11.
The statement by the Uzbek railways company says “an agreement was reached on the creation and development of new transport transit corridors” at the summit.
The Eurasianet notes that one roughly analogous transportation corridor described by Uzbekistan’s Investments and Foreign Trade Ministry envisions Tashkent being linked to Sofia in Bulgaria, via Istanbul, across a 5,150-kilometer, two-week route that takes in a crossing of the Caspian Sea.
But with Kazakhstan seemingly poised to make more sustained used of already-crowded trans-Caspian routes, the alternative option of going a shorter distance overland through Iran looks alluring, according to Eurasianet.
