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Kars–Gyumri–Tbilisi railway
Railway line in Turkey, Armenia and Georgia / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Kars–Gyumri–Tbilisi railway line is a railway line that runs from the city of Kars in Turkey to the Armenian city of Gyumri, and from there on to Tbilisi, Georgia.
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Originally completed in 1899, the railway was highly important during the Soviet era, both as the only direct rail link between Turkey and the USSR (Kars-Gyumri), and as one of the two main railway connections between Armenia and other Soviet Republics (Gyumri-Tbilisi). While the Gyumri-Tbilisi section remains Armenia's lifeline to the outside world,[1] the Kars-Gyumri section has not been operational since 1993, when Turkey closed the border with Armenia, following the first Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan, in support of the Azeris.[2]
Because the Kars–Gyumri section has been inoperative due to the closed Turkish-Armenian border, an agreement was signed in April 2005 to build a direct connection across the Turkish-Georgian border from Kars to Akhalkalaki in Georgia, and to rehabilitate the existing railways from Akhalkalaki to Tbilisi and Baku, thus creating the Kars–Tbilisi–Baku mainline. The European Union (EU) and the United States declined to assist in financing or promoting the new mainline, because they saw it as designed to bypass Armenia, and supported the reopening of the Kars-Gyumri-Tbilisi railway line instead.[3] However, the EU did "welcome" the opening of the line.[4]