Recent field visits to the Gürbulak–Bazargan border crossing between Türkiye and Iran and the Dilucu–Sederek border crossing between Türkiye and Azerbaijan brought together IRU, its members UND and ITCAI, customs authorities, and the road transport industry to review border procedures and identify practical steps to boost freight flows.
The Türkiye–Iran route through Gürbulak–Bazargan is one of the region’s key road transport corridors. Beyond bilateral trade, it provides a strategic link from Türkiye and Europe through Iran towards Central Asia and wider Asian markets. This corridor has become even more important amid recent geopolitical disruptions to trade routes.
Faster and more predictable
The TIR system plays a crucial role in corridors crossing national borders, including routes connecting Türkiye with Iran, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
In addition, IRU’s TIR-EPD platform enables operators to submit advance cargo information to customs authorities. This allows customs to assess risks in advance, manage workloads and target controls where needed.
Combining TIR-EPD with a TIR Green Lane, as at the Dilucu border crossing in Türkiye, puts these benefits into practice: TIR trucks that submit advance cargo information before arriving at the border can cross far more efficiently, while customs gain more time to manage workloads and assess risk before trucks arrive. The result is optimised procedures and faster, more secure, more predictable crossings.
“Our discussions and observations at the border crossings demonstrated the clear benefits of TIR,” said IRU General Delegate Erman Ereke. “Trucks operating under TIR benefit from faster and more predictable customs procedures. TIR-EPD and TIR green lanes take this facilitation one step further.”
The visits also covered the Dilucu–Sederek route, an increasingly strategic connection between Türkiye, Azerbaijan and Iran, with onward links towards the Caucasus and Central Asia. As regional trade and east–west connectivity grows, better coordination and streamlined border procedures will matter even more.
Unlocking corridor capacity
IRU continues to encourage the wider implementation of TIR green lanes across the region.
By streamlining secure TIR operations supported by advance cargo information, customs authorities can facilitate legitimate trade, strengthen risk management, and make more efficient use of existing border capacity.
“Quickly moving forward to eTIR, a fully digital equivalent of TIR, will further strengthen the security of this regional corridor,” said IRU General Delegate Erman Ereke.
IRU will continue working with customs authorities, its members and operators to promote TIR, digitalisation and risk-based border procedures, supporting more efficient trade between Türkiye and Iran and along the strategic corridors connecting Türkiye with Central Asia.
