Organization of Turkic States Multimodal Transport and Logistics Forum was held in Istanbul
“The Central Logistics Corridor, whose lines are drawn by the Silk Road line with a history of 2200 years, bringing East and West together, is still the most effective economic logistics route”
The Organization of Turkic States organized the “Intermodal and Logistics Forum” in Istanbul on 13-14 September to identify strategies to increase the effectiveness of the Central Logistics Corridor. The forum was organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and was attended by senior representatives of leading railway, maritime and road companies of the member states, members of the organization and experts.
The Organization of Turkic States is a pivotal economic cooperation organization that aims to promote cooperation, strengthen partnerships and enhance the efficiency, sustainability and resilience of global supply chains by focusing on the development of multimodal transport routes through the Central and Southern Corridors.
At the G20 Summit held over the weekend in New Delhi, India, the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, Italy and the EU announced the establishment of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). They had proposed IMEC, a far from economical, forced logistics corridor that excludes Turkey.
TIRPORT Chairman of the Board Dr. Akın Arslan, who took part in the Forum as a speaker, stated that the exclusion of Turkey, which is at the center of the logistics hub extending from China to the Middle East and Europe and to Africa in the south, is a political decision far from being economical, and that the proposed route in question will be extremely difficult to manage in terms of intermodal and its costs will be very high compared to the Central Logistics Corridor.
Turkey is in a natural logistics HUB due to the geography in which it has been located for centuries, as an end-to-end country connecting East-West and the Middle East, reaching Russia to the warm seas in the North and extending to Africa. The economic size of this hub is 10 trillion dollars. Turkey is at the center of all alternative logistics axes and energy corridors.
Any imposition of forced logistics corridors such as IMEC will not be efficient, fast and economical enough on intermodal routes that do not include Turkey, and therefore will never give confidence to the users. Those pushing this route will see the reality in real case feasibilities and simulations.
With the pandemic, the concept of offshore production has been hit hard. Supply problems have affected the large supply chain from end to end. The West is now largely turning to inshore alternatives. There is no more ideal production and logistics base for Europe than Turkey. Turkey can become an end-to-end manufacturing and logistics HUB.
India, with its unskilled production and unskilled labor force, is far from being a sustainable solution. How will Europe, which has implemented the highest level of regulations on green logistics and sustainability in the world, make India, which avoids signing these regulations, a production base and the main starting point of the logistics corridor in this process? This contradiction raises serious questions. India, which has recently taken the title of “the world’s most populous country” from China with a population of approximately 1.5 billion, is struggling to feed its own population and is producing under very poor conditions in order to feed this population. There is extreme poverty in the country. A logistics solution that would take the line through the deserts of Saudi Arabia, meet the sea again in unstable Israel, require numerous transshipments, connect to Greece, which lacks infrastructure and labor, and then distribute it to Europe, can only be a fantasy.