Two Rails to Medina

The Ottoman pilgrimage railway is being resurrected twice — by rivals. The rivalry is the bait. The architecture both rails install is the trap.

On Tuesday, June 9, 2026, two transport ministers signed a stack of memorandums in Riyadh, and a railway the First World War left for dead began to stir. Turkey’s Abdulkadir Uraloğlu and Saudi Arabia’s Saleh bin Nasser Al-Jasser put their names to agreements covering railways, logistics services, and infrastructure cooperation — the centerpiece being, i…