The tunnel is the southeastern European country’s second longest and sits at an altitude of 2,640 metres.

The Ovit tunnel in Turkey was the fourth longest in the world when it was completed in 2018, now the seventh, and passes through Mount Ovit – the country’s biggest landmass in the area – in the northeast.

With its length of 8.9 miles, it is the country’s second longest, after the Zigana Tunnel which was completed in May last year. In total, it cost around £154 million to complete.

The tunnel’s entrance altitude sits at about 1,900 metres, with an exit altitude of about 2,360 metres.

As a result of construction, the Rize-Erzurum Highway was reduced in length from 155 miles to about 124, saving about 50 minutes of drive time.

The Ovit tunnel provides access to the Black Sea for the East Anatolia region and uninterrupted transportation between the Rize and Erzurum Provinces. It also bypasses the highway which gets hampered by bad weather during the winter. In fact, Turkey usually implements a five-month-long closure due to heavy snowfall and avalanche dangers.

It was also hoped to reinvigorate the historic silk road, a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th-century. In total, it spanned over 4,000 miles and passed through Turkey, ending in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul.

However, this was not a new project. Initial construction began all the way back in the 1930s, around the time that modern Turkey was founded. It was then relaunched in 2012 under the new President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Yet the idea of building the tunnel goes back even further. At the opening ceremony in June, President Erdoğan said: “When we first launched this project, people said ‘it was only a dream.’ But we have done it. This project has been talked about since the 1880s.”

The idea of the project was first floated over 130 years ago during the Ottoman era.

The Ovit tunnel, and the new Zigana Tunnel are both double channel – or twin tube – tunnels, designed to eliminate dangers of lack of visibility and attention among drivers due to their lengths.

Red and white stripes were also installed in the Ovit Tunnel to increase safety, as well as several comfortable places to pull over, painted and illuminated.

The lighting and interior design were projected as a model of exemplary production in Turkey. Such ongoing infrastructure transportation projects, like the Ovit Tunnel, are believed to reveal the region’s trade potential.