TRIPP, Turkish Railways, and the Real Game
Pashinyan is selling Armenians a dream railway connection through Nakhijevan to Kars. But Turkey has already built a multi-billion-dollar line directly to Nakhijevan, and Aliyev says the Armenian route was never part of the plan.
Hovik Manucharyan details a critical asymmetry in the regional railway infrastructure competition. Pashinyan has framed the railway dispute as necessary for Armenia to participate in transit corridors, specifically proposing a connection from Yeraskh through Nakhijevan to Gyumri and then to Kars. This vision, he argues, would integrate Armenia into the broader TRIPP framework and unlock economic benefits through regional connectivity.
However, the actual infrastructure reality tells a different story. Turkey has already invested billions of dollars to build a direct railway connection from Kars to Nakhijevan, bypassing Armenian territory entirely. This multi-billion-dollar project represents Turkey’s preferred routing and reflects its strategic priorities. Importantly, Aliyev has publicly stated that there was never any plan to extend TRIPP or any corridor northward through Gyumri and then to Kars. His statements indicate that the Turkish-Azerbaijani axis has already secured what it wants without needing Armenia’s participation in a northern route.
This dynamic exposes a fundamental imbalance in Pashinyan’s position. He is surrendering control of Armenia’s railways and incurring massive debt to access a transit corridor that his neighbors may never actually construct through Armenian territory. Meanwhile, his concessions are irreversible. Hovik’s assessment suggests that the EU and US, by pressuring Armenia to remove Russian influence, are not opening doors to Armenian prosperity but rather clearing obstacles for Western-aligned infrastructure projects that may benefit other regional actors far more than Armenia itself. The railway dispute, in this reading, is not about operational management but about geopolitical realignment that locks Armenia into Euro-Atlantic structures while surrendering the strategic leverage that Russian partnerships once provided.
Transcript
Asbed Bedrossian: Azerbaijan. For geographic purposes, let's specify that that point, Yeraskh, is on the northwestern side of Nakhijevan.
Hovik Manucharyan: Yes. So that would, ostensibly, that sounds good. But what's interesting is that, and the reason that Pashinyan is doing that, it's actually one of Robert Kocharyan's ideas. But why Pashinyan is doing it is he's trying to make it like Russia is against building this. And I don't know what happened in the back rooms, but I'm pretty sure that if it made financial sense for Russia to do it, then Russia, why wouldn't they? But what happened is now they're saying, well, you know, it's not just, you know, you not building these connections to Yeraskh, there's also mismanagement and we're going to take you to court for it. So I'm pretty sure that was not the original reason. And the reason why Pashinyan is ostensibly phrasing it this way is that he says we want to connect through Yeraskh, go to Nakhijevan, then go to Gyumri and go to Kars. So that is ostensibly the vision that Pashinyan is selling to Armenians. But first, Turkey has invested billions of dollars to build the railway connection from Kars to Nakhijevan directly. Through Armenia South. It's a $6 billion project or something, multi-billion dollars, let me just say.