Clifford Chance has advised Turkish and international financiers on the €1.2 billion financing of the Kınalı-Malkara motorway extension project in Türkiye, one of the most structurally complex cross-border infrastructure mandates to close in the region this year.
The transaction, announced on 22 June 2026, involved a multi-jurisdictional team spanning the firm’s Dubai, Istanbul, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Rome and Munich offices and drew on financing structures rarely assembled within a single deal.
The project company, Çanakkale Otoyol ve Köprüsü İnşaat Yatırım ve İşletme A.Ş., is sponsored by Limak İnşaat Sanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş., the Turkish conglomerate with an established track record across infrastructure in the region.
The motorway extension builds on the existing operational Malkara-Çanakkale section of the Kınalı-Tekirdağ-Çanakkale-Savaştepe corridor, which includes the 1915 Çanakkale Bridge — the suspension bridge with the longest main span in the world — and will enhance connectivity between Istanbul and the Marmara and Aegean regions.
Financing was provided by Turkish and international financial institutions, with credit support from four export credit agencies: Korea’s K-EXIM and K-SURE, Italy’s SACE, and Sweden’s EKN, alongside ICIEC, the Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit, a member of the Islamic Development Bank Group.
The layering of Korean, European and Islamic finance structures within a single transaction reflects the increasing sophistication of emerging-market infrastructure financing and the appetite of export credit agencies to support large-scale Turkish transport projects.
Partners Nicholas Wong, Sait Eryılmaz and Mel Chan led the overall financing team, with partner Qudeer Latif and senior associate Ibrahim Hassan advising on the Islamic financing and ICIEC elements.
Counsel Filippo Tassoni and senior associate Giuseppe Chiaula handled the SACE insurance workstream, while partner Sandy Hall and counsel Philippe Baert advised on construction, operation and maintenance arrangements. Hedging was led by partner Timothy Cleary and counsel Gregory Chartier, with senior associates Marco Wong and Lucy Roberts supporting the overall financing structure.
For solicitors and in-house counsel advising sponsors or lenders on infrastructure mandates, this transaction illustrates the growing expectation that project finance teams combine conventional debt, export credit agency-backed facilities and Shariah-compliant structures simultaneously.
The coordination demands across regulatory regimes — Turkish project law, ECA-specific documentation requirements, and AAOIFI-compliant Islamic finance frameworks, require both specialist depth and the capacity to run parallel workstreams without losing transactional coherence.
Law firms without credible multi-jurisdictional project finance capability, or without established ECA and Islamic finance practices sitting within the same deal team, will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage as similarly structured transactions become more common across Central Asia, the Gulf and Southeast Europe.