{"id":979,"date":"2008-07-24T15:02:05","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T12:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=979"},"modified":"2023-04-02T12:51:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T09:51:31","slug":"turkey-georgia-azerbaijan-launch-joint-rail-link","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/07\/24\/turkey-georgia-azerbaijan-launch-joint-rail-link\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan launch joint rail link"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Hatice Aydogdu<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>KARS, Turkey, July 24 (Reuters) &#8211; Leaders of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan launched a railway project between the three countries on Thursday, building on links already forged by gas and oil pipelines.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>At a railway station in the eastern Turkish border town of Kars the presidents of the three countries held a ground breaking ceremony for the $290 million Turkish section of the railway.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The three countries are already linked by the BP-led Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas line but trade links between Turkey and the Caucasus region are limited.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Georgia&#8217;s Mikheil Saakashvili and Azerbaijan&#8217;s Ilham Aliyev placed three sections of railway track on a large map of the region in a symbolic launch of the project as confetti showered down.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A tender last September for construction of the 76-km (47-mile) Turkish stretch of the railway was won by the Ozgun Yapi-Celikler joint venture with a bid of $289.8 million, the lowest of 14 bids.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The project involves new track construction and renewal of existing track, and is expected to be completed in 2011. (Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jon Boyle)<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/in.reuters.com\/article\/oilRpt\/idINL4105404720080724\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Hatice Aydogdu \u00a0 KARS, Turkey, July 24 (Reuters) &#8211; Leaders of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan launched a railway project between the three countries on Thursday, building on links already forged by gas and oil pipelines. \u00a0 At a railway station in the eastern Turkish border town of Kars the presidents of the three countries [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,209,89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-azerbaijan","category-georgia-caucasus","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}