The Turkish government has secured nearly $1.4 billion worth of foreign guaranteed loans toward construction of its latest high-speed railroad. Beginning at Yerköy, roughly midway along the east-west 250-mile Ankara-Sivas High-speed Railway, the offshoot line will run 90 miles southeast to Kayseri.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan formally launched the Yerköy-Kayseri project in July 2022, following a few months after the appointment of a three-firm Turkish joint venture.  

"As one of the contractors for the Ankara-Sivas High-speed Railway...we are eager to bring our expertise to the Yerköy-Kayseri route," says Tolga Akkaş, general manager at Doğuş İnşaat ve Tic. A.Ş. Ankara to Sivas has been operating since April.

Akkaş also chairs the project's Doğuş-Çelikler-Özkar joint venture, which secured the infrastructure contract from Turkey's General Directorate of Infrastructural Investment with a $570-million bid. The scope includes excavating more than 62-million cu yd, erecting 1.5 miles of bridges and building six miles of tunnel, according to Doğuş. 

Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group led the arrangement of $1.1 billion of loans underwritten by the export credit agencies of Austria, Italy, Poland and the U.K. Another $241 million was underwritten by the Islamic Corp. for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit.