TURKEY: Infrastructure manager TCDD has called tenders for the construction of a 34 km extension of the Yolçatı – Diyarbakır – Batman – Kurtalan railway to Siirt.
There would be stations serving Siirt airport and university and in the city centre. The planned 160 km/h alignment would include six bored tunnels totalling 15·6 km, 12 service and emergency tunnels totalling 11·7 km, cut and cover tunnels totalling 1·5 km and two viaducts totalling 600 m.
Bids are due by June 17, with completion planned within 1 800 days of the contract signing.
The line is to be electrified. Minister for Transportation & Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said electrification and modernisation of the existing line from Yolçatı to Kurtalan would also go ahead, and confirmed plans to build a new alignment from Diyarbakir to Mazıdağı as a first stage in the planned rail connection between Diyarbakir and Mardin.
The tender comes after militant group the Kurdistan Workers Party announced that it would disband, and Uraloğlu said the new and modernised lines would make significant contribution to economic, commercial and tourist activities in the southeast.
A railway between Kurtalan and Siirt was planned in the 1940s as part of through line to Iran, but the route through the mountains south of Lake Van proved too challenging. An alternative route opened in 1971 runs from Elazığ to Tatvan, where a train ferry crosses the lake to Van for onward transit to Iran.
