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Turkish and Armenian officials convened in Kars on Tuesday for the inaugural meeting of a joint working group tasked with rehabilitating and reopening the Kars-Gyumri railway, a line dormant for more than three decades, in a concrete step forward in the two countries' ongoing normalization process.
Türkiye's Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the meeting in an official statement, noting that both sides underscored the importance of bringing the railway back into operation as soon as possible to improve regional transport links.
The Kars-Gyumri railway last carried passengers and freight across the Türkiye-Armenia border in July 1993, when Ankara closed the frontier amid the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh.
The closure severed a transport corridor that had connected the two countries, and the broader South Caucasus region, for well over a century. Restoring it has long been seen as a bellwether of any genuine rapprochement between Ankara and Yerevan, which have no diplomatic relations and whose border remains sealed.
Tuesday's meeting was convened under the framework of the Türkiye-Armenia Normalization Process, a diplomatic track that has proceeded in fits and starts in recent years. The formation of a dedicated technical body to address the railway signals a degree of institutional commitment that earlier rounds of dialogue had not produced.
U.S. Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack welcomed the development in a post on social media, calling it "an important milestone for regional connectivity and peace."
Barrack linked the progress to what he described as the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity and to a White House summit held on August 8, framing the railway initiative as part of a broader American-backed push for stability in the South Caucasus. "A new South Caucasus, interconnected and at peace, is taking form," he wrote.
Should the line be restored, it would create a direct rail link between Türkiye and Armenia for the first time since the Cold War era and open a new freight and transit artery in a region already undergoing significant geopolitical realignment following the 2020 and 2023 military developments in and around Karabakh.
Analysts have long argued that economic interdependence, anchored by infrastructure links, could help stabilize relations between Ankara and Yerevan and reduce both countries' dependence on longer, costlier transit routes.
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