From Imperial Infrastructure to Transnational Industrial Heritage: Architectural Technology and Conservation in the Berlin–Baghdad Railway Corridor

This study examines the Istanbul–Baghdad section of the Berlin–Baghdad Railway as a long-life infrastructural system through the intersecting lenses of architectural technology, industrial heritage, and sustainable conservation. Constructed through an Ottoman–German partnership in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the railway was not merely a transportation project but also a large-scale technological, architectural, and territorial intervention that reshaped urban, rural, and industrial landscapes across the Middle East. Extending through present-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, the line produced a transnational infrastructural corridor composed of stations, depots, bridges, tunnels, workshops, water structures, service buildings, and related settlement patterns. Methodologically, the study combines archival research, historical cartography, spatial analysis, typological and constructional examination, field observation, photographic documentation, and satellite imagery. Through this multi-scalar approach, it investigates both the material characteristics and the spatial continuity of railway architecture along the corridor. The findings demonstrate that the relatively preserved railway heritage in Turkey, the war-damaged remains in Syria, and the fragmented traces in Iraq should not be considered as isolated national cases. Rather, they constitute interconnected components of a shared industrial heritage corridor whose historical, architectural, and technological significance exceeds contemporary political borders. In response to the uneven preservation conditions across the region, the study proposes a three-tiered conservation framework based on documentation, adaptive reuse, and transnational heritage cooperation. By situating the Berlin–Baghdad Railway within current debates on industrial heritage, architectural technology, and sustainable conservation, the article contributes a transferable model for managing fragmented infrastructural landscapes. It argues that long-life railway systems can serve as critical resources for cultural continuity, spatial sustainability, and collaborative heritage practices in regions marked by political fragmentation and material vulnerability.