Turkey has ended up with a preliminary agreement worth $6.75 billion in funding with six international financial institutions for a major railway project that is going to cross the Bosporus through İstanbul’s third bridge, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, the Transport and Infrastructure Minister, announced on February 24, 2026.
Apparently, the funding is going to support the 125-kilometer Northern Ring Railway Project, which will carry passengers along with freight between Gebze, which is located on the Anatolian side, and Halkalı, situated on the European side, through the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, hence linking two major airports of Istanbul – the Sabiha Gökçen and the İstanbul airports.
As per a statement from Uraloğlu, the project is going to become the largest foreign-financed railway investment in Turkey.
Notably, the preliminary agreements have already been reached with the World Bank as well as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, along with the Asian Development Bank, the OPEC Fund for International Development, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Islamic Development Bank, confirmed the minister.
Interestingly, the preparation with regard to a tender of the Northern Ring Railway Project is currently on, said Uraloğlu, also adding that the government looks forward to completing the bidding process in 2026 itself and starting the construction post the delivery of the site.
He also went on to describe the level of international participation as an indication of confidence in the railway strategy of Turkey and opined that the institutions are indeed going to collectively offer $6.75 billion in terms of funding.
It is well to be noted that the railway is going to span 125 kilometers and shall have 44 tunnels having a combined length of around 59.1 kilometers with 42 bridges that would total to 22.4 kilometers.
According to the minister, the project will indeed prove to ease off both passenger and freight congestion when it comes to the Marmaray corridor and would directly link İstanbul Airport and Sabiha Gökçen Airport via rail for the very first time in history.
Uraloğlu remarked that the line is going to prominently grow the rail transport capacity of Turkey between Asia and Europe. Once finished, it is estimated to carry 33 million passengers and also 30 million tons of freight per year.
The Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, which is also called the Third Bosporus Bridge, goes on to span the Bosporus Strait north of two older crossings of Istanbul, which are the 15 July Martyrs Bridge as well as the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge. It goes on to connect Garipçe in Sarıyer on the European side to Poyrazköy in Beykoz on the Asian side near the Black Sea entrance to the strait.
The construction started in 2013, and the bridge pulled down the curtains to traffic in August 2016. At 322 meters, which is around 1,056 feet high, Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge is among the tallest bridges in the world and also regarded as one of the widest suspension bridges, measuring 58.4 meters, or 192 feet, across.
