Present at the ceremony are Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, member of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegović, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus Mustafa Akinci, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, and other state officials.

Representing Azerbaijan at the opening is a delegation headed by Parliament Speaker Ogtay Asadov.

Special security measures have been taken for the event.

The bridge has a total of eight lanes for cars as well as two railway lines. In order to accommodate these it is 58.5 meters wide – wider than any other suspension bridge in the world. The length of the bridge is 2,164 meters. In addition, the bridge’s pylons are themselves exceptional in terms of height. The longer of the two pylons is 322 meters tall – only two meters shorter than the Eiffel tower.

The bridge – which began to be built in May 2013 and was completed at a cost of $3 billion – has been constructed with the intention of providing traffic, particularly freight, with a way to bypass the busy motorways of inner Istanbul and the two pre-existing bridges.

The ceremony started off with a Qur’an recitation.

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