The new high-speed railway (Yüksek Hızlı Tren) was inaugurated in a ceremony in Konya hosting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım and Development Minister Cevdet Yılmaz. Speaking at the ceremony, Erdoğan said the construction of the 212-kilometer high-speed railway and the test runs had taken only four and a half years to complete, which he said was significantly shorter than most of such projects elsewhere in the world, citing a 204-km line between Italy’s Rome and Naples, which took 11 years to be completed, and another 216-km line between Germany’s Hanover and Berlin which took 7 years. “I would like to remind you that in the past it took more than 10 hours to go Konya from Ankara by train. But thanks to this high-speed train, travel time to Konya has been reduced to now takes only 1.5 hours with stops in Eskişehir and Afyon,” the prime minister said. “More importantly, the line has been designed and built by Turkish contractors and engineers and is currently the fastest constructed high-speed railway in the world.” The project for the railway cost TL1 billion. The train can reach a maximum speed of 255 kilometers per hour during the trip.
The Turkish government has decided to implement several major transportation projects, totaling $100 billion by the year 2023, the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey. The government aims to connect east to west and north to south, the largest land and railway strategy ever implemented in Turkey. China and Russia are among the countries interested in constructing these projects.
The Turkish State Railways (TCDD), which is affiliated with the Ministry of Transportation, plans to invest $100 billion in transportation by 2023, the 100th centennial of the Turkish Republic. In addition to building a new canal in İstanbul, the prime minister also plans to build two new bridges on the İstanbul and Dardanelles straits. There is also a project to construct a new railway from Samsun and Trabzon to the port of Mersin to reduce freight traffic on the Black Sea. Together with a project to extend the oil and natural gas pipeline from Samsun to Ceyhan, the government aims to also complete a two-line railway project by 2023.
