**Turkey’s Digital Growth Sparks New Opportunities for Azerbaijan’s Middle Corridor**
*Baku, Azerbaijan – 5 September 2026* – Turkey’s economy expanded by 2.3 percent year‑on‑year in the second quarter of 2026, a modest figure amid high inflation and tight monetary policy. However, the sector that drew the most attention was information and communication activities, which grew 8.6 percent in the same period.
The “information and communication” category is broader than the traditional IT sector. It covers telecommunications, internet infrastructure, software, digital services, data centres and related activities. Turkey’s sector has recorded ten consecutive quarters of growth, with annual growth rates in the past four quarters ranging between 8.6 and 9.9 percent. The expansion has been driven by digital transformation, cloud services, data centres, artificial intelligence and significant investment in 5G.
### Digital Connectivity as a New Trade Channel
For Azerbaijan and the wider South Caucasus, Turkey’s expanding digital economy could become a new channel of economic integration alongside energy, transport and trade. Digital infrastructure increasingly determines how efficiently other parts of the economy operate.
Azerbaijan has long positioned itself as a transit country linking Central Asia with Turkey and Europe through the Middle Corridor. Traditionally, the focus has been on railways, ports, highways and customs infrastructure. The next stage is likely to be digital.
Cargo moving through Azerbaijan and Turkey generates vast amounts of information—customs documents, invoices, shipment data, tracking information, insurance records and transport documents. If these systems can communicate with each other, the physical movement of goods can become faster and more predictable.
Turkey and Azerbaijan have already begun to move in this direction. In 2026, the two countries launched a pilot for an electronic CMR (e‑CMR) to digitalise cross‑border freight documents. The project aims to reduce paperwork, lower administrative costs and improve visibility for logistics companies.
Turkey’s telecommunications infrastructure supports this possibility. Turkish authorities reported that the country’s fibre network reached 697 000 kilometres in the first quarter of 2026, while total broadband subscriptions reached 99.5 million. Investments linked to 5G are also driving demand for fibre, data centres and network capacity.
Azerbaijan is developing its own digital infrastructure simultaneously. During the first half of 2026, 147 government institutions migrated to the Government Cloud, and 140 private organisations used data‑
Article and image source: azernews.az
