MLIT, MLAC and the Middle Corridor eBL — The Missing Layers

The short version

Türkiye cannot move an electronic bill of lading down the Middle Corridor with MLETR alone. Three UNCITRAL instruments have to line up: MLETR to make the record capable of being possessed and transferred, MLIT to make a signature issued in one country verifiable in the next, and MLAC to let a transfer execute without a human in the loop and still bind. Türkiye has enacted none of the three. It has, however, already built almost everything MLIT describes — under a statute from 2004.

The public conversation is entirely about MLETR. That is the layer everyone can name. It is also, on a corridor route, the layer least likely to be the first thing that breaks.

Three layers, three different failures

These instruments are often lumped together as “UNCITRAL digital trade texts”. They are not interchangeable. Each answers a question the others cannot.

MLETR (2017) answers: can this record be possessed? A paper bill of lading works because it is a thing you can hold and hand over. MLETR gives an electronic record the same legal quality through the concepts of singularity and exclusive control (Arts. 10–11). Without it, an eBL is a file, not a document of title.

MLIT (2022) answers: can the next country verify who signed? Adopted 7 July 2022 and endorsed by General Assembly resolution 77/101, it is the first global legislative text on identity management and trust services. Four chapters: general provisions, identity management, trust services, and — the part that matters here — cross-border recognition.

MLAC (2024) answers: does it still bind if no human acted? Adopted 11 July 2024 and endorsed by resolution 79/119, it gives legal standing to contracts formed and performed by automated systems, including AI and so-called smart contracts. It contains attribution rules for the outputs of automated systems, recognition rules for computer code and dynamic information, and an optional rule for unexpected outcomes.

Remove any one of the three and the corridor reverts to paper. Not partially — completely, because a chain is only as legally sound as the weakest handover in it.

Türkiye already built MLIT’s Chapters II and III — in 2004

Read the list of trust services MLIT names in Articles 16 to 21: electronic signatures, electronic seals, electronic timestamps, electronic archiving, electronic registered delivery services, website authentication.

Now read what Türkiye has had in production for two decades: qualified electronic signature under Law No. 5070, e-seal, timestamping, KEP (registered electronic mail), e-archiving, and TLS certification — all delivered through BTK-licensed certification service providers (ESHS). The mapping is close to one-to-one. This is not a coincidence; both descend from the same European regulatory lineage.

So the domestic layer is not the gap. Türkiye has a working, supervised, legally recognised trust services market. What Türkiye does not have is MLIT Chapter IV — the mechanism by which a foreign counterparty’s system can accept a Turkish qualified signature without a bilateral negotiation, and by which a Turkish system can accept theirs.

That is an unusually cheap gap to close. Enacting MLETR requires touching the Turkish Commercial Code’s treatment of possession and negotiable instruments — substantive, contested, slow. Enacting MLIT’s cross-border chapter is largely additive to a framework that already exists.

Why the EU route is closed for Türkiye

A reasonable objection: why bother with UNCITRAL when eIDAS exists? Because eIDAS does not reach Türkiye. Article 25(2) of Regulation 910/2014 gives a qualified electronic signature the legal effect of a handwritten signature, and Article 25(3) makes a QES issued in one Member State recognised in all of them. Türkiye is not a Member State.

The third-country door is Article 14: trust services from outside the Union are recognised as legally equivalent only where recognised through implementing acts or an agreement concluded between the Union and the third country under Article 218 TFEU. Türkiye has neither. A Turkish QES is therefore not automatically equivalent to an EU qualified signature, whatever its technical quality.

So one route requires an EU accession-adjacent instrument that does not exist, and the other requires a model law nobody in the region has enacted. That is the actual position, stated plainly.

Walking one Middle Corridor transfer

Take a container moving Mersin → Georgia → Azerbaijan → Caspian crossing → Kazakhstan → China, with a bill of lading that is meant to stay electronic the whole way. Four points where the law is asked a question:

1. Issue. The Turkish carrier or agent signs with a qualified electronic signature under Law No. 5070. Domestically this is solid — Art. 5 gives QES the legal effect of a wet-ink signature. But note Art. 5(2): negotiable instruments (kıymetli evrak, which includes the bill of lading) and guarantee contracts are carved out. The signature is valid; the instrument type is not yet inside the regime.

2. First handover. The Georgian or Azerbaijani party’s system now has to answer: is this Turkish certificate trustworthy, and by what rule? Absent MLIT-style recognition there are three options — a bilateral arrangement, manual out-of-band verification, or ignoring the signature and reverting to paper. In practice it is the third.

3. Endorsement. Transferring the eBL requires the legal concept of exclusive control. That is MLETR territory, and it is exactly where Türkiye currently stands outside. Our Türkiye eBL Legal Status Tracker keeps the running position on that reform.

4. Automated leg. If the handover at Aktau or Khorgos is executed by a rules engine or smart contract rather than a person — which is the entire operational argument for eBLs — someone will eventually ask who acted, and whether the output binds the party whose system produced it. MLAC exists to answer that. Nowhere on this route has enacted it.

The honest scoreboard for Türkiye

MLETR (2017) — not enacted. Reform work in progress; TCC Art. 1526(2) permits electronic creation, but Art. 1230 still ties transfer to physical possession (zilyetlik).

MLIT (2022) — not enacted. Domestic equivalents of Chapters II and III already operating under Law No. 5070 and BTK supervision. Chapter IV (cross-border recognition) missing.

MLAC (2024) — not enacted. No visible legislative work.

One qualification worth stating, because it cuts against the urgency of this article: UNCITRAL publishes a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction enactment status list for MLETR. It publishes no equivalent list for MLIT or MLAC. Adoption of these two is not yet at a level that warrants tracking. Türkiye is not behind a crowded field; the field is close to empty.

The case against caring about this yet

The strongest counterargument is timing. MLETR was adopted in 2017 and, nine years on, has been enacted by roughly a dozen jurisdictions, several of them small and several with deliberately narrow scope. MLIT is four years old with no published enactments. MLAC is two years old with none. On that trajectory, planning an operation around MLIT recognition is planning around something that may not arrive this decade.

That objection is correct about enactment and wrong about design. Nobody is suggesting an operator wait for MLIT. The suggestion is narrower: when you choose an identity and signature stack now, choose one whose trust anchors can be re-pointed later without re-papering your contracts. Systems that hard-code a single national trust list are the ones that will need rebuilding when recognition does arrive. That costs nothing to get right today and is expensive to retrofit.

The instrument that could actually carry this in our region

The Turkic States Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (OTS DEPA) covers, almost exactly, the Middle Corridor states. Türkiye ratified it — but it is not yet in force, pending Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. A DEPA is a plausible vehicle for a mutual recognition arrangement for trust services, because it is already a digital-trade instrument among precisely the parties whose signatures need to be recognised by each other.

That is a hypothesis, not a plan on anyone’s desk that we are aware of. But if cross-border recognition of electronic signatures arrives on the Middle Corridor before MLETR does, this is the most likely route — and it would be the more useful of the two arriving first.

What we tell an operator today

Qualified electronic signature under Law No. 5070 is legally sound in Türkiye right now for the overwhelming majority of maritime documents: survey reports, letters of protest, charter party correspondence, customs declarations, crew agreements. Use it. The gap is not in signing; it is in the negotiable instrument carve-out and in cross-border verification.

Keep the signature layer and the transfer layer architecturally separate. Do not let a platform bundle them so tightly that a legal change in one forces a migration of both. And keep an eye on which of the three model laws moves first in your corridor — because whichever one it is, it will not be the one the press releases are about.

Primary sources

UNCITRAL Model Law on the Use and Cross-border Recognition of Identity Management and Trust Services (2022) — uncitral.un.org/en/mlit
UNCITRAL Model Law on Automated Contracting (2024) — uncitral.un.org/en/mlac
General Assembly resolution 77/101 (MLIT) — undocs.org/A/RES/77/101
General Assembly resolution 79/119 (MLAC) — undocs.org/A/RES/79/119
UNCITRAL MLETR and enactment status — uncitral.un.org (MLETR status)
Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 (eIDAS), consolidated text — eur-lex.europa.eu
Law No. 5070 on Electronic Signature — mevzuat.gov.tr

Written by Gökçen Özkan, Master Mariner and Flag State Surveyor, founder of Maresign. Published 28 July 2026. Corrections welcome at digital@maresign.com.