What to read after Turkic Council Countries: Infrastructure, Trade, Logistics and Transportation?

The Cooperation Council of Turkic Speaking States (the Turkic Council - TC) was established

in 2009 as an intergovernmental organization to promote multilateral cooperation among

Turkic Speaking States. The four founding member states of the TC are Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,

Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. In addition, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are two possible future

members of the council. This study aims to investigate the infrastructural investment, trade,

logistics and transportation potential of the mentioned countries as well as elaborate these

activities among the TC’s current and possible future members. For this purpose, firstly,

present situation of the trade among the Council’s current and possible future members has

been examined. At this point, it is made clear that the trade volume among these six states is

not as much as expected, but it is open to healing.

Later, the opportunities and the last developments that may increase the trade volume among

the TC’s current and possible future members in line with advancement of their infrastructural

potential are explored. In reality, the geographic location of these states is very good. Namely,

they are on the old trade route known as the Silk Road channels; however, this road was not

active for a long time. Recently, this ancient trade route between East and West was aimed to

be revived by China. Besides, India is keen to develop another approach of the Silk Road under

the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) initiative. In fact, these are

great opportunities for the TC’s current and possible future members. That is, there is a very

large volume of trade between China and Europe, and currently almost all of this trade is done

through sea transport. Hence, if even a small part of this trade is transported by the Chinese

Initiative of the Silk Road, its contribution to the current and potential future members of the

TC and their integration into each other will be great. However, at this point, there are some

tasks that current and potential members of the TC must complete to mobilize the Silk Roads.

In fact, opening of Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) rail link recently was an important step to make it

active, but this is not fully enough. In this work, it is also aimed to set out these tasks from the

perspective of each current and potential member.

Finally, with the help of this review, the limitations and problems of each state’s infrastructural

investment, trade, transport and logistics system have been put forward for improvement

studies.