Ankara-Gerede Highway

Bechtel’s work on the Trans-Turkish Motorway, with its local partner, Enka, is a perfect demonstration of the company’s global reach paired with its unique ability to deliver everything, from crushed rock to sophisticated financing, to a customer—in this case the Turkish government. Enka-Bechtel built two sections of the high-speed motorway. The highway system is critical to Turkey, linking Istanbul, Turkey’s European port, and Ankara, its Asian depot.

Building the motorway―one of the largest highway construction jobs ever―was a challenge. In some places, the road reached heights of 5,000 feet; altogether more than 196 million cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated. The first Enka-Bechtel section, a six-lane, 70-mile segment, connects Ankara, the capital, with the city of Gerede; the second is an eight-lane, 70-mile beltway that circles Ankara. At peak, the effort employed nearly 6,000 Turkish workers—one of Bechtel’s largest international direct-hire jobs—and raised construction skill levels in Turkey. In some cases, workers who had arrived at the site not knowing how to drive a car left as expert operators of multimillion-dollar, 250-ton hydraulic cranes.