The Development Road between the Persian Gulf and Turkey

Erdogan was telling the truth; he was very annoyed with the launch of IMEC – Silk Road during the G20 summit in September 2023: “I have clearly said, and I repeat: no corridor will be created without Turkey. If you want to connect the Persian Gulf to Europe, Turkey remains the most logical route. We are very much ready with our partners to build the corridor between the Persian Gulf and Turkey through Iraq: no one else intends to waste time.”

In fact, the Baghdad government, which invested the first $17 billion in the project, has announced that a winning bidder will be selected next January to manage the Grand Faw Port near Basra in the Persian Gulf. An infrastructure that could handle three and a half million containers by 2028 and would provide an alternative, perhaps even a cheaper one, to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea route, which has been blocked for a year, with Western naval missions failing to restore its navigability.

The shortlist of bidders for the new port, just released by the Iraqi government, includes players representing the interests of China, India, France, and the Emirates.

Obviously, no United States here that supports an alternative project called the Cotton Road – IMEC, which appears to have stalled due to the serious situation in the Middle East and the subsequent freezing of the Abraham Accords between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as feasibility considerations.

The choice will be among the world’s big names: Cosco, China Merchants Port Group, MSC (which has a strong presence in Trieste), Evergreen, CMA CGM, Adani, ICTSI, ABM Global Shipping.

Korean giant Daewoo Engineering is physically building the docks and has already handed over five berths.

The design and construction management of the Grand Faw Port in the Persian Gulf, including the railway part, has been entrusted to Technital, whose president is Zeno D’Agostino, a respected former president of the Trieste Port Authority, who has sent 60 technicians to the construction and is working throughout the Central Asian region on a number of other initiatives, including COP 29 in Baku on climate change.

The expectations of the Iraqi and Turkish governments for the project are high. They imply creating a road network called the Development Road, which stretches 1200 kilometers across Iraq and is designed to connect the border between Iraq and Turkey to the Gulf coasts south of Iraq by 2030.

The project also involves the construction of a rail network connecting the southern port of Grand Faw in Iraq to the port of Mersin in Turkey. One of the main goals of the project is to help turn oil-rich southern Iraq into a commercial transit hub. But above all, it is the creation of an alternative trade corridor along Suez for goods coming from the east of the Eurasian continent and destined for Europe and vice versa.

From Turkish ports located on the Mediterranean Sea, goods will be able to go in particular towards Trieste via the proven Maritime Highway, born of the “Yugoslav wars” of the 1990s that made the Balkans impassable, and which currently already accounts for 70% of Turkish exports.

The project involves introducing high-speed trains into the territory of Iraq, the development of local industrial and energy centers, including oil and gas pipelines, as well as the construction of more than 1200 kilometers of railroads and highways that will connect Iraq with neighboring countries. The project will provide infrastructure to the densely populated area of ancient Mesopotamia, ensuring development after decades of wars and turbulence.

Turkey and Iraq have agreed to meet monthly to speed up the construction process.

Importantly, on its route from south to north, the Development Road connects to the New Silk Road median corridor, which from China reaches Turkey by passing through the Caspian Sea and is undergoing remarkable development, also thanks to Ankara’s commitment.

Thus, the interconnectedness of Eurasia continues despite Western attempts to keep it divided and conflictual.

Even before abandoning the new Silk Road, Rome announced it was joining the IMEC Cotton Road project promoted by Washington to cut off China and Russia from global production chains. In fact, imagine a rail route from a port in Saudi Arabia to Haifa in Israel, crossing over 2500 kilometers of desert.

Turkey, the main partner of the Free Port of Trieste, will also remain on the sidelines. Obviously, Turkey has responded not only in words, but above all by accelerating the construction of the Development Road corridor.

Since Italy’s membership in the IMEC project is inconsistent and currently “frozen,” it has inflicted a heavy embarrassment on strategic commercial partners such as Turkey and China, without gaining any concrete benefits other than American “benevolence” toward the Meloni government.

Major journals in the United States, such as the Atlantic Council and the National Interest, are discussing how to involve Italy and in particular Trieste (a potential BRI port hub a few years ago) in this project on an economic and strategic level. And the common American and Italian interest in strategic control of the Mediterranean, extending to the Indo-Pacific, which is IMEC’s true goal, is emphasized.

Washington promoted the I2U2 group during the first Trump administration: a group of Israel, the USA, the United Arab Emirates, and India that was adopted by the Biden administration.

One of the I2U2 projects is precisely the IMEC Cotton Road, as opposed to the Silk Road and the Turkish-Iraqi Development Road, both viewed favorably by China and Russia.

It is no coincidence that Kaush Arha, who has been following the I2U2 group from the beginning on behalf of the American administration, traveled to Trieste several times to seek consensus among the operators on the participation of the Port of Trieste in the Cotton Road, which in turn would have been the apex of the Three Seas, pursuing mainly strategic objectives, given the commercial and economic failure of the project and the lack of American commercial interests in the area.

Thus, a kind of “trade corridor war” was created, which was also reflected in Netanyahu’s speech at the UN, where he presented two maps illustrating two corridors labeled “The Blessing” and “The Curse” respectively.

But the Development Road has started and is moving forward quickly, while the Cotton Road remains in an unlikely fantasy world. If and when this happens (the minimum requirement is a difficult pacification of the Middle East region), Italy may specifically be forced to choose between silk and cotton.

It’s better to have a clear idea of what to do. If only to avoid passive suffering from a possible next heavy negotiation phase in China-US relations brought about by Donald Trump’s upcoming second term as president. However, it will have to be seen what impact Elon Musk’s support for the president-elect will have on foreign policy, as he has strong interests in China, where Tesla’s Shanghai plant covers half of the electric car brand’s global production. Musk is familiar not only with Chinese vehicles and politicians, but also with Russian ones, especially regarding the safety of his of Starlink satellites fleet. The situation is marked by unpredictability.