Organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure, the 12th Transport and Communications Council, where the transportation and communication systems of the future will be discussed, started at Istanbul Atatürk Airport. Transport ministers and deputy ministers from 55 different countries, as well as industry professionals, came together at the Council, in which the Republic of Turkey State Railways (TCDD), the pioneer of railways, also participated.
Within the scope of the Council, Transporttech Conference, Transport Ministers Roundtable, sector sessions, bilateral meetings and panels will be held with the vision of "National Transport and Infrastructure Policy".
Transport and Infrastructure Minister Adil Karaismailoğlu, Deputy Chairman Binali Yıldırım, ITF Secretary General Young Tae Kim, TCDD General Manager Metin Akbaş and national and international representatives of the communication and transportation sector attended the first day of the Transport and Communications Council, which will be held on 6-8 October.
“THE HEART OF THE WORLD OF TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION WILL BEAT IN ISTANBUL”
Pointing out that sector representatives from many countries met in Turkey within the scope of the Council, Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismailoğlu said that the heart of the transportation and communication world will beat in Istanbul for 12 days within the framework of the 3th Transport and Communications Council. Minister Karaismailoğlu stated that the communication and transportation sectors are among the basic pillars of the economy in the global world, and drew attention to the highly developed phase of the communication and transportation era.
Minister Karaismailoğlu stated that it is no longer possible for countries to compete in the globalizing world without having a healthy communication and transportation infrastructure, and said: “We live in an information age where the progress and innovations of technology accelerate the flow of time. Concepts such as far-near, known-unknown, familiar-foreign have become meaningless, borders have become transparent, and obstacles to mutual interaction have been removed to a large extent. Societies immediately began to demand not only what was offered to them, but the best in the world in every field. Once again, we witnessed the discomfort caused by even a few hours of communication interruption in the society and how necessary domestic and national practices are. As a result, transparency, freedom, justice, accountability and good governance have become values that apply not only to a privileged part of the world, but to the whole world. It is also clear that countries that do not understand this, reject it and cannot keep up with the transformation will be left behind events and time. It is an indisputable fact that it is impossible to curb technology. Because what is imagined today is the reality of tomorrow. Technological developments will make the world of tomorrow much more transparent than today and will leave nothing in tight quarters. It is essential for countries to invest in transportation and communication infrastructures within strategies integrated with the requirements of the world and the age.
Minister Karaismailoğlu drew attention to the importance of planning Turkey's transportation and communication strategy with its regional and global dimensions, with its geopolitical and geostrategic location at the intersection of three continents. First of all, Karaismailoğlu stated that in order for a geographical area to be called a region in the world, there must be communication and transportation networks that will enable communication and interaction between countries and peoples, and that this has been the case throughout history.
Drawing attention to Turkey's advantageous position, Karaismailoğlu continued his speech as follows: “Our country is a country of 4 countries with a 1 hour flight, 650 billion 38 million people, 7 trillion dollars Gross National Product and 45 trillion 67 billion dollars trade volume. is in the center. Based on our geostrategic position, it is indispensable for Turkey to redefine our transportation and communication strategies in the light of global and regional conditions and to keep these strategies up-to-date at all times. In the words of our President, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 'Politics means producing works for the country and serving the nation.' We have been working with this understanding for 19 years, and we shape the future vision of Turkey, whose face has been enlightened by the investments made in the field of transportation and communication, by keeping the pulse of the world, by following the technological developments closely and always putting integration at the center. ”
“OVER 58 MILLION PASSENGERS HAVE TRAVELED WITH HIGH-SPEED TRAINS TODAY”
Pointing out that Turkey, on the Middle Corridor of the Iron Silk Road stretching from Asia to Europe, from China to London, has a great strategic importance in international freight and passenger transportation, Karaismailoğlu stated that they started a reform process in the railways based on this reality. Karaismailoğlu stated that they had renewed all of the railways that were untouched until 2003, and said: “We have built our nation's half-century-old dream high-speed train lines. We brought Ankara-Eskişehir-Istanbul-Konya high-speed train lines to our country. We have increased the length of the railway to 12 kilometers within the scope of our goals to re-knit our country with iron nets. 803 thousand 3 kilometers of railway construction continues. To date, over 500 million passengers have traveled by high-speed trains. We did not leave our high-speed train work here. We are continuing our work intensively to complete the construction of the Ankara-Sivas and Konya-Karaman high-speed railway line, which we have come to an end. In addition, our work continues rapidly on the Ankara-İzmir, Ankara-Bursa, Mersin-Adana-Gaziantep, Karaman-Ulukışla, Aksaray-Ulukışla-Yenice routes. In addition to these works, we increased our signal line length by 58 percent and our electrified line length by 172 percent. With Marmaray, one of the most important transportation projects in the world, we connected two continents under the sea.”
“WITH THE BAKU-TFLIS-KARS RAILWAY, WE PROVIDED AN UNINTERRUPTED RAILWAY CONNECTION FROM ASIAN TO EUROPE”
Adil Karaismailoğlu, by opening the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line, they provide uninterrupted railway connection from Asia to Europe, this line; He said that the middle corridor stretching from Beijing to London and the Iron Silk Road stretching from Kazakhstan to Turkey have become the most strategic connection point and started a new era in the field of rail freight transportation. Karaismailoğlu stated that the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line has reduced the freight transport time between China and Turkey from 1 month to 12 days, and with the integration of Marmaray into this line, the time between Far Asia and Western Europe has decreased to 18 days. Karaismailoğlu stated that a total of 1.133 trains, 20 wagons and 819 million 1 thousand tons of cargo have been transported on the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars line to date, and continued his speech as follows: A total of 290 kilometers of urban rail system lines are operated in 12 different cities throughout Turkey. 811,4 kilometers of these lines were constructed by our Ministry. Our work on the construction of 312,2 lines and approximately 7 kilometers of rail systems in 14 different cities, including Istanbul, Bursa, Ankara, Kocaeli, Konya, Kayseri and Gaziantep, continues. We have crowned all these achievements in our railway transportation network with the domestic and national railway industry that developed in the same period.
We have achieved a new momentum and synergy in the rail system production processes in our country by combining 3 important companies in our country, where different parts of the rail system vehicles are made, under the roof of TÜRASAŞ. We have made TÜRASAŞ the largest rail system vehicle manufacturer in the Middle East.”
Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Karaismailoğlu stated that they have completed the test processes of the National Electric Train set, which has a speed of 160 kilometers per hour, and said, “We will start the mass production of the national electric locomotive in 2022. We will come to the prototype production stage by completing the design work of the National High Speed Train, which has a speed of 225 kilometers per hour.” said.
Noting that with these projects, an important stage will be reached for Turkey in the production of rail system vehicles, including metro, suburban, tram design and production, Karaismailoğlu said: “As it is known, there has been a axis shift in air transportation activities in recent years. Depending on global population movements and trade balances, air transportation activities are rapidly shifting from west to east today. As I mentioned before, Turkey, with its key geographical position in the middle of three continents, is on the flight routes between developed and emerging markets. Taking these into account, we have become one of the fastest developing countries in the world with our air transportation policies and activities since 2003. Between 2003 and 2021, we made more than TL 114 billion in aviation investments.
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