The material completion of the Turkish government’s 503-kilometre (313-mile)  Ankara to Izmir high-speed rail project stands at just 24%, daily Birgun has reported.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) broke ground on the ambitious project in 2013. Back then, the transport minister of the day Binali Yildirim said that the railway would come online within 1,080 days by 2016.

Yildirim went on to enter the history books as Turkey’s last prime minister before the post was scrapped following the 2017 constitutional referendum. Thirteen years later, his project has emerged as a textbook case of infrastructure gridlock.

Project outlasts six ministers, has seventh in sights

So far, the high-speed rail project has outlasted six transport ministers: Yildirim, his successor Lutfi Elvan (Dec 2013 to March 2015), Feridun Bilgin (to May 2016), Ahmet Arslan (to July 2018), Mehmet Cahit Turhan (to March 2020) and Adil Karaismailoglu (to June 2023). The incumbent is Abdulkadir Uraloglu.

The corridor is designed to stitch together the capital with Turkey’s Aegean commercial hub. Its Turkish lira-denominated estimated costs have, meanwhile, multiplied 23-fold thanks to the country’s inflation saga.

Originally budgeted at Turkish lira 4.3bn ($2.4bn at 2013 exchange rates), the projected cost of the line under the transport ministry budget ballooned to TRY 101.4bn ($2.1bn at the current exchange rate) by June this year.

In 1H26 alone, capital expenditure on the project was registered at TRY 1.41bn, including TRY 1.2bn for physical construction in addition to TRY 118.9m for “consultancy and technical oversight services”.

In April, current transport minister Uraloglu paid a visit to a project construction site in the town of Sinanpasa in Afyon province. He described the project as “one of the prestigious projects of Turkey”.

The main project contractor is Turkish contractor ERG Insaat. Other Turkish contractors such as Kolin Insaat and Sigma Insaat operate as sub-contractors.

Brits working 24/7

In 2022, UK Export Finance (UKEF) said that it would provide €2.1bn in financing for the project. The financing was led by Credit Suisse and Standard Chartered Bank under a reinsurance provided by export credit agencies SACE in Italy, SERV in Switzerland and OeKB in Austria.

In February this year, British Steel said that it had switched to 24/7 manufacturing to fulfil its commitment to provide tens of millions of pounds sterling worth of rails, amounting to 36,000 tonnes in all, to the project.

“Every tonne of British made steel used in projects at home and abroad helps sustain skilled employment and reinforces its quality for the world's most ambitious engineering projects,” the UK’s then industry minister, Chris McDonald, was quoted as saying in a British Steel press release.

On July 21, McDonald was appointed as health minister. Currently, Blair McDougall is the UK industry minister.

In April this year, the British government seized British Steel, having sold it to China’s Jingye Group back in 2020.

In May, King Charles III said that the UK government would take “all action necessary to safeguard the domestic production of steel”.