According to Turkish officials familiar with the matter, Turkey and Abu Dhabi's wealth fund ADQ are negotiating to build a railway over the Bosphorus Strait in the Black Sea as the trade corridor that would link Europe to the Middle East and Asia.

The railway would cross one of the longest and widest in the world, the Yavuz Sultan Selim suspension bridge, which was built for $3 billion by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

This could be an addition to a package of potential deals between Turkey and the UAE, which pledged $51 billion back in July to support the Turkish economy, right after Turkey and the Arab states decided to move on from years of animosity.

In a statement to Bloomberg, a UAE official claimed that the country hoped bilateral trade with Turkey would reach $40 billion by 2030 and hoped to invest in “key sectors” like energy, logistics, tourism, and agriculture.  

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Given its strategic location, Turkey strives to establish a critical trade corridor, which it hopes to reach and see between the UK and China. The anonymous sources stated that it aims to connect Gulf nations to its railway and highway network. They added that other infrastructure projects may follow.

Turkey, once part of the ancient Silk Road, aims to establish a corridor to Azerbaijan across southern Armenia or Iran as a new trade route to Asia. 

Erdogan has accelerated efforts to convince the Gulf States to back a $17 billion trade route from Iraq’s port of Basra, after the US and India agreed last month on a competing route with support from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and "Israel," in response to China’s growing influence across the energy-rich region.