The Baku–Tbilisi–Kars (BTK), or Baku-Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars railway (BTAK), is a regional rail link project to directly connect Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The project was originally to be completed by 2010, but was previously delayed to 2013. In February 2014 Azerbaijan's Transportation Minister, Ziya Mammadov, stated that the project wouldn't be completed before the second half of 2015. In September 2015, it was announced that service would not begin before an unspecified time in 2016, and following a fifth trilateral meeting in February 2016, the three countries' foreign ministers announced that the railway will finally be completed in 2017.

 

Passenger trains will feature new sleeping coaches.

 

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project is intended to complete a transport corridor linking Azerbaijan to Turkey (and therefore Central Asia and China to Europe) by rail. (In late 2015, a goods train took only 15 days to travel from South Korea to Istanbul via China, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—considerably less time than a journey by sea.) The line is intended to transport an initial annual volume of 6.5 million tonnes, rising to a long-term target of 17 million tonnes.