Connectivity as Strategy: Türkiye's Infrastructure Diplomacy in the Western Balkans
Road, rail and energy projects have become the most visible instrument of Türkiye's regional engagement. This analysis asks what they buy, and what they cost.
Over the past decade, infrastructure has moved from the margins to the centre of Türkiye's engagement with the Western Balkans. Motorway corridors, rail modernisation and interconnector projects now account for a substantial share of bilateral activity, and they carry political weight well beyond their engineering value.
Three logics at work
The first is commercial: Turkish contractors have accumulated deep regional experience and compete effectively on cost and delivery speed. The second is strategic: corridors that shorten the distance between Anatolia and Central Europe reduce dependence on any single transit route. The third is reputational, and the least discussed.
Each logic implies a different measure of success, and conflating them makes projects hard to evaluate. A corridor that pays for itself commercially may deliver little strategic value; one that is strategically significant may never clear a standard cost-benefit threshold.
What the region gains
For host states, the appeal is straightforward: financing on terms that are frequently more flexible than those available from European institutions, and delivery timelines that are politically legible within a single electoral cycle. The trade-off is a heavier debt profile and, in some cases, procurement arrangements that sit uneasily with EU accession requirements.
Resolving that tension is the central task of the next phase. It requires transparency standards that neither side has yet fully committed to, and a shared framework for assessing which projects genuinely serve regional integration rather than bilateral visibility.