The potential effects of the Zangezur Corridor on Türkiye’s foreign trade

The Zangezur corridor connects Azerbaijan and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. An exclave of Azerbaijan. After the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, the obstacles to opening the Zangezur corridor were solved through the ceasefire agreement. Implementing the Zangezur corridor will shorten the route used nowadays by the Baku—Tiflis—Kars railway by almost 150 km. For this reason, it is thought that this corridor would decrease transportation costs and increase trade volumes. Türkiye, which will have direct land contact with Turkic countries, is the country of one of the most prominent effects of the opening of the Zangezur corridor. The main objective of this study is to determine the effect of Türkiye’s trade volumes on the opening of the Zangezur corridor. To investigate this, the study constructs a built-in structural gravity model with a new economic geography perspective covering 182 countries from 2007 to 2023. Then, the coefficient values obtained from the model are used to determine the possible change in Türkiye's trade with nine Asian countries that are expected to use this corridor directly. According to the results, it is expected that Türkiye’s top three export-enlarging countries, respectively, are Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, which will be import-enlarging Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Uzbekistan.