ASIA: Turkey has agreed to fund reconstruction of 30 km of railway in Syria which was destroyed during the civil war, Turkish Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu announced following a meeting between transport officials from Turkey, Syria and Jordan.
Syria’s Ministry of Transport reported that the section to be repaired would be between Damascus and the border with Jordan, but did not give a precise location.
Uraloğlu also confirmed that Turkey is working on a broader transport action plan aimed at boosting connections between the three countries and opening up a corridor to Jordan’s Red Sea port of Aqaba. The three sides agreed a memorandum of understanding for co-operation to boost transport links.
At the same meeting on September 11, Jordanian officials agreed to explore the possibility of taking on responsibility for the repair, maintenance and operation of locomotives in Syria and for the possible start of rail services between the two countries.
Rail services in Syria were halted in 2012 because of the civil war which resulted in the destruction of much of the infrastructure. Limited services were restarted in 2020, and main line test operations between Aleppo and Hama began in August 2025.
Rail operations inside Jordan use the 1 050 mm gauge of the famed Hedjaz Railway. Trains run from the Syrian border as far as the capital Amman, but the line from Amman south to Ma’an and on to the Red Sea port of Aqaba has been out of use since 2018.
The original Hedjaz Railway continued from Ma’an as far as Madinah in what is now Saudi Arabia, but was abandoned after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Plans to revive the line were abandoned after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Beginning in the 2000s, the Jordanian government started acquiring land for a proposed line from the Syrian border via Zarqa to the Saudi Arabian border following the old Hedjaz route, as well as a line linking Aqaba to this planned Zarqa – Saudi Arabia line, a new alignment between Mafraq and Irbid, and a line between Amman and the Iraqi border. To date though, no progress has been reported.
