Turkish State Railways

Turkey has announced that it suspended railway services over its Iranian border due to the number of coronavirus cases in its eastern neighbor.

Turkish State Railways (TCDD) said in a written statement that passenger and freights trains between Turkey and Iran has been temporarily halted, starting from 5:00 p.m. local time (1400GMT) on Feb. 23.

The Turkish State Railways (TCDD) held a tender for cleaning graffiti drawings on Marmaray, the rail connection between European and Asian Istanbul via a tunnel beneath the Bosphorus Strait.

The tender and the signature process for cleaning the exterior surfaces of the train sets painted by graffiti makers was concluded on Jan 3.

The Turkish State Railways (TCDD) has signed a contract for 10 Velaro high-speed trains with Siemens, which submitted the most favorable bid in the tender.

The Turkish State Railways (TCDD) introduced on June 2 connections to Belgrade and Bucharest on the Istanbul-Sofia Express, which was launched on Feb. 20.      

According to the announcement on the TCDD website, the express train between Istanbul and the Bulgarian capital Sofia started making stops in the Romanian capital Bucharest on June 2.      

The first express train from the Turkish city of Istanbul arrived in Sofia on Tuesday after a nine-and-a-half-hour trip, reported Anadolu Agency.

The head of passenger service in Istanbul with Turkish State Railways commented that the state-of-the-art express train with four cars will run every day.

The director of Siemens Turkey's high speed trains department has said the company plans to bid in a tender expected to be opened by the Transport Ministry to buy a total of 80 high speed trains in mid-2016. 

"We want to bid and we are evaluating the process now," said Siemens' Cüneyt Genç in an interview with Reuters. 

Turkish Airlines and Turkish State Railways signed a cooperation agreement on April 21, laying the ground for combined transport operations and the joint training of staff.

The protocol was signed at the headquarters of Turkish Airlines by CEO Temel Kotil and the general manager of Turkish State Railways, Ömer Y?ld?z.

More civil servants who are seeking to run for a parliamentary seat submitted their resignations on Feb. 10, ahead of the deadline on the same day for civil servants to resign in order to be nominated as candidates for the June 7 parliamentary elections.