Iraq, Kurdistan Region in talks to build railway with Turkey

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have concluded a draft agreement with Turkey in order to create an international railway connecting the three together, a Kurdish official told Rudaw on Wednesday.

“We have concluded a draft agreement with Baghdad which will be between Baghdad, Turkey, and us [Kurdistan Region], in order to build railways from Fao port to Baghdad, Kirkuk, Erbil, Mosul, Duhok, and from there to Nusaybin and Turkey,” Kurdistan Region’s Minister of Transportation and Communications Ano Jawhar Abdoka told Rudaw’s Bahroz Faraidun.

Abdoka added that they have had several visits to Baghdad to discuss the building of the international railway.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in February signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the German Deutsche Bahn railway company to design a railway system across the Kurdistan Region.

Abdoka said that the Iraqi government has already set up an agreement with an Italian company for the international railway, and the KRG is working on signing an MoU with the British TenBroeke company to start implementing the Region’s railway system.

While plans for a railway system in the Region are novel, a revitalization of Iraq’s railway network, left to crumble during the era of US-imposed sanctions during the 1990s, has taken place over the past few years.

A revival of the Fallujah-Baghdad railway route was completed in 2018, while $137 million was spent on 12 new trains from China in 2016.

Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Masrour Barzani in March said that he had been in talks with Iraq, Turkey, and Gulf countries regarding the formation of a regional railway network that would boost trade in the Region.