On 31 July, India’s parliament received a revealing update on Chabahar. New Delhi had fulfilled its $120 million commitment for port equipment, with the final tranche transferred in August 2025. Yet the conditional US sanctions waiver that protected the project expired on 26 April 2026, and the Indian government would say only that it remained in contact with the relevant parties. 

The juxtaposition matters: India has paid for a long-term presence, but the legal environment around that presence can still change abruptly. That tension should shape any Turkish engagement with the port.

Chabahar will not reconcile Türkiye and India over Pakistan, differences over Kashmir, or their competing regional partnerships. Nor will it suddenly turn the two countries into geopolitical allies. Its more plausible value is smaller. The port could give Ankara and New Delhi a practical agenda built around specific commercial interfaces: port services, onward rail and road connections, customs documents, insurance and legally compliant payment arrangements. 

The aim should not be to announce another grand corridor. It should be to make a limited number of cargo movements predictable enough for firms to use twice.

This distinction matters because debate about Türkiye–India relations tends to swing between two unhelpful positions. One assumes that political distrust makes serious economic cooperation impossible. The other treats connectivity as a shortcut around political disagreement. Logistics cannot erase strategic differences, but it can sometimes be compartmentalised from them. 

India has an operating role at Chabahar’s Shahid Beheshti terminal, Iran wants more transit cargo, and Türkiye sits at the western end of rail and road networks crossing Iran. That overlap is real even when political trust is not.

Need for Two Pilots

The starting point should be the port itself, not a map of Eurasia. India Ports Global Limited (IPGL) signed a ten-year contract with Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization in May 2024 to equip and operate the terminal. Chabahar has handled commercial cargo for years, including containerised and bulk shipments, but a functioning terminal is not the same as a dependable through-route. 

Turkish freight forwarders need to know berth windows, storage charges, container availability, customs cut-off times and responsibility for damaged or delayed cargo. A jointly published service schedule would be more useful than another memorandum describing Chabahar as a “gateway”.

The rail question demands the same discipline. The Chabahar–Zahedan line remains unfinished, while the rest of the journey depends on Iranian rail capacity, wagon availability and transfers between road and rail. Türkiye and India should therefore avoid making cooperation conditional on one large infrastructure project. 

A first pilot could move a small container block from an Indian west-coast port to Chabahar, by road to an operating Iranian railhead, and then by rail towards Tabriz and Türkiye. A separate pilot could test the north-eastern branch towards Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The purpose would be measurement, not ceremony: total transit time, border waiting, cargo loss, insurance cost and the number of documents required.

There is already enough institutional material to begin. Chabahar was used for an intermodal TIR movement linking Afghanistan, Iran and India in 2019, while Türkiye and Iran had previously tested a fully computerised eTIR corridor. Rather than inventing a customs regime, the three governments should connect those experiences. Cargo data could be submitted before arrival, seals recognised across each leg, and a single digital file used for the manifest, certificate of origin and transit guarantee. Through bills of lading should specify where liability passes from the shipping line to the road carrier and then to the railway. These details sound mundane. They are exactly where regional corridors usually fail.

Finance and insurance are harder because they cannot be separated from sanctions policy. The US decision to revoke the Chabahar exception warned that port operators and related actors could face exposure under American law. Treasury guidance also makes clear that maritime insurers and service providers can incur sanctions risk when they support prohibited Iranian activity. Calling a payment channel “sanctions-resistant” does not solve that problem. 

A Compliance Protocol

Türkiye, India and Iran would need a compliance protocol identifying eligible cargo, screening every carrier and counterparty, and excluding designated banks, vessels and end users. Port dues and rail charges could be settled through ring-fenced escrow or local-currency accounts only where lawful, with automatic suspension clauses if the sanctions position changes.

Türkiye’s contribution should be operational, not symbolic. Ankara need not seek equity in the port or rebrand Chabahar as an extension of the Middle Corridor. Turkish rail operators, customs officials, freight forwarders and bonded-warehouse companies can help organise the western leg and quote a door-to-door price. 

India can bring cargo volumes, port-operating experience and links to its west-coast terminals. Iran remains the sovereign host and indispensable transit state. 

Central Asian or Caucasian partners should join only when a particular pilot passes through their territory. Keeping participation route-specific would reduce the number of political veto points.

Modularity also limits financial damage. Each service contract should be short, separable and renewable only after a completed shipment. There should be no common infrastructure fund before commercial demand is demonstrated, and no promise that one pilot will grow into a continent-wide network. If sanctions tighten, a cargo category becomes ineligible or an insurer withdraws, that module should stop without bringing down the rest of the arrangement. 

If a route proves slower or more expensive than Bandar Abbas, the Caspian or conventional maritime shipping, governments should publish that result rather than subsidise an illusion.

A Test Shipment

The first test should be deliberately modest: one scheduled shipment of clearly non-sanctioned containerised cargo from an Indian port through Chabahar to a Turkish inland terminal, with its time, cost and compliance steps recorded. If no reputable bank or insurer can support it lawfully, the project should pause. If it works, repeat it before adding new destinations. 

Chabahar will not transform Türkiye–India relations. It can, however, show whether two countries with serious political disagreements are capable of making one difficult commercial route work.

(The author is a researcher and his work examines Türkiye’s relations with South and Southeast Asia countries. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at besermehmetenes@gmail.com /  Linkedin / X  )