Passenger rail services between the capital cities of Iran and Turkey are set to resume in July, the CEO of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways announced.
Saeid Rasouli made the announcement after a meeting with Turkish rail officials in Tehran on Sunday.
Tehran-Ankara passenger train services were suspended in 2015 following an explosion triggered by terrorists. None of the 180 passengers was injured in the incident, but a wagon was damaged.
The Turkish government blamed PKK insurgents for the attack.
However, rail route services for freight transportation were not suspended after the attack.
The Turkish officials were part of a delegation that attended the eighth meeting of the Joint Transport Commission between the neighboring countries.
Iran’s Deputy Roads and Urban Development Minister Shahram Adamnejad and his Turkish counterpart, Selim Dursun, co-chaired the event.
Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami and Turkey’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Mehmet Cahit Turhan, as well as the head of Turkish State Railways, Ali Ihsan Uygun, and Rasouli also attended the two-day commission held on April 28-29.
Currently, a weekly passenger service is operating between Iran's northwestern city of Tabriz and Turkey's eastern city Van.
An agreement is expected to be signed by the officials of the two countries in the near future for easing the transit of trains from Central Asian states through Iran and Turkey.
Turkey and Iran on Monday underlined plans to bolster bilateral relations and expand cooperation in the field of transportation.
“Turkey is Iran’s gateway to Europe and Iran is Turkey’s gateway to Asia, especially to Central Asia,” the Turkish transportation minister told a press conference following talks with his Iranian counterpart, Anadolu News Agency reported.
Underlining deep historical and cultural ties between Turkey and Iran, Turhan said ties between Ankara and Tehran are expanding in the framework of bilateral and regional mechanisms.
The minister stressed that cooperation between Turkey and Iran will contribute significantly to the prosperity of the region.
Turkey is a popular tourist destination for Iranians.
Latest available data released by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism show more than 1,894,100 Iranians visited Turkey in the first 11 months of 2018, which mark an 18.17% decline compared with the corresponding period of last year when the number of Iranian visitors was 2,314,656.
Among all tourists who visited Turkey from January to November 2018, only 5.05% were Iranian.
The drop was more significant in November, as the number of Iranian travelers to Turkey declined by 46.39% from 196,000 in last November to 105,000 this year.
In November 2018, only 5.35% of all travelers who visited Turkey were Iranian.
The decline is mainly due to Iranian purchasing power declining in the wake of the national currency’s depreciation.
