Turkey builds 764-kms security wall across Syrian border to stop refugees

Ankara – Turkey has completed the construction of a 764-kilometer (475-mile) concrete wall along its border with Syria to stop illegal Syrian families from entering into the country, according to a Turkish official.

TOKI, a state backed housing developer said they built 564-kilometer (350-mile) section of the wall, while the governorates of the border provinces built 200 kilometers (124 miles).

Turkish president, Tayeb Erdogan launched the construction project in 2015 to build an 826-km wall on the Syrian border to protect Turkey’s national security, and combat illegal border crossings.

The wall was sealed along Turkey’s border provinces of Şanlıurfa, Gaziantep, Kilis, Hatay, Mardin and Şırnak.

The modular walls are being erected along Turkish-Syrian borderline with seven-ton mobile blocks, two meters wide and three meters high. The wall is topped with a one-meter-high razor wiring.

An electronic layer consists of close-up surveillance systems, thermal cameras, land surveillance radar, remote-controlled weapons systems, command-and-control centers, line-length imaging systems and seismic and acoustic sensors.

The advanced technology layer of the project includes wide area surveillance, laser destructive fiber-optic detection, surveillance radar for drone detection, jammers and sensor-triggered short distance lighting systems.

Due to the surge in Syrian migration to Turkey since the breaking of Civil war in 2011, millions of Syrians have migrated to Turkey, while local Turkish population face economical crunch, which has turned Turkish citizens against poor-migrated Syrians. —Daily Sabah