New Bridge Opening Highlights Infrastructure Improvement in Turkey

By Justin Mays:

Turkey celebrated another infrastructure feat in March with the inauguration of the 1915 Canakkale Bridge. This is the longest middle-span suspension bridge worldwide, built through the ingenuity of 670 engineers, and 5000 workers to bring it to fruition.  The design, construction quality, and technical knowledge it took to build mirrors many of the other large renowned infrastructure projects that Turkey has completed in the last couple of decades.

Linking Europe and Asia, the bridge spans the Dardanelles, a strait in the Çanakkale province between the Aegean Sea to the south and the Sea of Marmara to the north. Speaking at the bridge opening, President Erdogan noted that a new period is now starting, in which all transportation activities, whether by land, sea, rail, or air, will pass through Turkey.

Infrastructure development has seen a robust period in the last couple of decades in Turkey with many new projects making ease of transport and travel a priority. Some exceptional projects include the new road linking Istanbul to Izmir which shaves hours off the trip between the two cities, and fast speed intercity and inner-city trains that are also making travel easy for people to move around.

Areas that had poor infrastructure are also recipients of positive developments with Turkey making local connectivity a priority in inner-Anatolia through dozens of tunnels and hundreds of kilometers of highways and bridges. The World Economic Forum has recognized Turkey in recent Global Competitiveness Reports with high rankings for transportation infrastructure and excellent road connectivity.