Middle Corridor: Türkiye's Role and the European Leg

Where the route runs

The Middle Corridor is a multimodal link: cargo from China reaches the Caspian Sea via Kazakhstan, crosses it by vessel, and continues through Azerbaijan and Georgia into Türkiye — and from there to Europe. Its formal name is the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR).

Its significance comes from geography. The route offers an alternative to the northern corridor and to sea freight through Suez. Türkiye sits at its western end — the point where cargo opens onto Europe.

What the figures show

According to publicly available sources, volume carried on the TITR reached 2.6 million tonnes between January and July 2025, while container traffic more than doubled year on year to 40,200 TEU. Full-year volume is projected at around 5.2 million tonnes.

Türkiye’s Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure puts the potential annual trade volume of the rail link at USD 75 billion, and expects Türkiye to carry 6.5 million tonnes a year over the route.

On transit times the sources disagree: China–Europe is reported at 15 days on some services and around 30 days on others. Sea freight typically takes 30 to 45 days on comparable routings. These are not our own measurements; sources are listed below.

Our role: the European leg

To be clear: we have no recorded shipments on the Middle Corridor itself, east of Türkiye. Our work begins at its western end.

Our operating system holds 9,990 recorded shipments across 14 corridors, all of them between Europe and Türkiye. We run five terminals in Italy; customs brokerage (General Gümrük Müş. Ltd.) and insurance agency (Servis Sigorta Ar. Hiz. Ltd.) both belong to our group of companies.

So when cargo that arrived in Türkiye via the Middle Corridor needs distribution into Europe — or when goods move from Europe into Türkiye — transport, customs clearance and insurance run through a single organisation.

Each of those European lanes has its own measured transit time, taken from the shipments we recorded on it rather than from an estimate:

• Italy → Türkiye — 6.3 days on average, from 8,511 shipments
• Germany → Türkiye — 6.0 days, from 477 shipments
• Spain → Türkiye — 9.9 days, from 292 shipments
• Netherlands → Türkiye — 7.1 days, from 132 shipments
• France → Türkiye — 9.6 days, from 118 shipments

What governs the paperwork on all of them is the EU–Türkiye customs union — the A.TR certificate and the TIR transit procedure. That is covered in the customs guide.