# Middle Corridor Trade Intelligence Brief
# Middle Corridor Trade Intelligence Brief
**Issue No. 3**
**Date of issue: 2 November 2026**
Posted to the channel as PDF: https://t.me/daily_turkic/3523
Week covered: 26 October to 1 November 2026. Every item below was checked against the operational rule: an item runs only if it changes a booking, a price, a transit time or a compliance step on the Trans-Caspian route.
## 1. Volumes and capacity
Transit shipments along the Middle Corridor grew 90% year on year in January-September 2026, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told the 13th OTS summit in Ankara on 30 October; total corridor cargo over the same nine months rose 30%. (Qazinform / Caspian Post, 30 October 2026)
The 153 km Cerkezkoy-Kapikule section of the Halkali-Kapikule line in Türkiye has opened for passenger and freight trains. Freight transit on that section drops from 8.5 hours to 3.5 hours, and annual freight capacity on the section rises from 1.5 million to 9.5 million tonnes. (Global Construction Review, 23 October 2026)
Türkiye's infrastructure agency AYGM has called tenders for modernising, resignalling and electrifying the 825 km Divriği to Georgian border line, the eastern half of Türkiye's Middle Corridor section, in three lots: Divriği-Erzincan, Erzincan-Erzurum, and Erzurum-Kars plus the Kars-border link. Bids are due 22 December 2026 and all work is to finish within four years of contract signing; on completion, freight transit between the Georgian border and Divriği falls from 55 hours to 22 hours, and line capacity rises from 750,000 tonnes a year to 20 million tonnes a year. The work is funded with USD 660 million from the World Bank and USD 250 million from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. (Railway Gazette, 29 October 2026; also RailFreight.com, 30 October 2026)
Kuryk Port handled 884,800 tonnes of cargo in the first half of 2026: 475,500 tonnes by rail, split 242,300 tonnes of exports and 233,200 tonnes of imports, 306,200 tonnes by road, and 104,100 tonnes through its grain terminal. The port's 2025 total was 1.956 million tonnes. (Trend News Agency, 30 October 2026)
ASCO ferries carried 32,380 vehicles in January-September 2026, 12% more than the 28,847 in the same period last year, weighing 837,557 tons, up 15%. Transit vehicles alone accounted for 776,744 tons, up 11%. (APA, 26 October 2026, citing ASCO)
## 2. Delays and disruptions
No qualifying items this week.
## 3. New services and operators
No qualifying items this week.
## 4. Policy and customs changes
Kazakhstan is amending its rail regulations, in force from 20 December 2026, so that when capacity is short, international freight gets priority over domestic freight. (RailFreight.com, 27 October 2026)
Türkiye will announce technical bids on 11 November 2026 for the Istanbul North Rail Crossing Project (INRAIL), a 127 km line across the Bosphorus via the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge linking Istanbul's airports and industrial zones on both sides. The project is expected to cost about USD 8 billion with World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank financing, and to take four to five years to complete. This is the dated procurement step for the same crossing whose OPEC Fund loan was reported in issue 2. (Türkiye Today, reporting Nikkei Asia, 30 October 2026)
## 5. Rates where public
No qualifying items this week.
## Data annex
Exchange rates (ECB reference rates via Frankfurter, as of 30 October 2026): USD/TRY 49.948, up 0.37% on the week. EUR 0.89509 per USD, CNY 6.6529 per USD.
Strait traffic (IMF PortWatch, 25 October 2026): Bosporus 62 transits, 16 of them tankers, against a 7-day average of 53.7 transits.
Daily Turkic, Middle Corridor Trade Intelligence Brief. Sources as named per item. Figures are as published by the operators and outlets cited.