Why is Turkey building hundreds of kilometers long walls along its border?

Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleiman Solo said in November 2020 that the 911 km wall on the Syrian border had been completed.

According to the information received, the wall work started in the year 2016. Officials say the purpose of this wall is to improve security, stop smuggling and illegal migrants.

After the unrest in Syria, a large number of people started moving towards Turkey, after which the work of building the wall was started.

According to the pro-government newspaper Sabah, the wall is two meters wide and three meters high and has been put up with barbed wire over a seven-ton concrete block.

According to the Anadolu news agency, thermal cameras, close-up surveillance cameras, radar for surveillance, remote control weapon system and line length imaging system, besides acoustic sensors have also been installed on this wall.

This wall on the Turkish border is the longest wall on the Mexico border after the US-built wall and the Great Wall of China.

Turkey is also building a 200-km-long wall along its 560-km-long border with Iran.

It is being said in Turkish media that these steps are being taken to stop smuggling and illegal migration of the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).

At the start of the civil war in Syria, Turkey kept its borders open to Syrian civilians, allowing millions of Syrian refugees to enter Turkey.

According to UN figures, there are still 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, which is the largest number of refugees in any country in the world.

But now the attitude towards Syrian refugees in Turkey has become stricter and Turkey does not allow anyone to cross the border.

According to officials, the situation of Syrian refugees has stabilized since 2017.

Turkey also completely closed its border in the year 2020 when Syria and Russia bombed Idlib, displacing thousands of people towards the Turkish border.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey will no longer bear the burden of refugees.

Human rights groups accuse Turkey of pushing people back from the border and killing them.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says border guards have reportedly shot and killed 465 people since 2011.

The construction of a wall on the border with Iran has also been started to stop the increasing number of migrants from Central Asia.

People fleeing the unrest in Afghanistan use this route to enter Turkey via Iran.

Matin Kora Betar, head of the Asylum and Migration Research Center (IGAM) in Ankara, told PRESS24 NEWS Monitoring that it was the only way to enter Turkey for years.

State broadcaster TRT quoted Turkish officials as saying that the construction of a wall along the Iranian border has significantly reduced the number of illegal border crossings and smuggling incidents.

However, Matin Kora Betar has said that refugees are still entering Turkey from places where the wall has not yet been built.

Some Kurds say that the purpose of Turkey’s construction of border walls is only to prevent Kurdish unity.

Kurds live in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

The Kurdish National Movement aims to end the borders dividing Kurds, which were created after the First World War.

The pro-Kurdish English magazine ‘Rozwa’ warned in 2019 that the Syrian Wall would divide Kurdish society.

Ramadan Aras of Istanbul’s Ibn Haldun University has called the construction of the wall on the Syrian border “painful”. He wrote in his book ‘The Wall’ that the purpose of Turkey’s security wall is to end the social, economic and political ties of the Kurds living on both sides.

President Erdoan called the wall an “anti-terrorist step” in 2017.

President Erdoan said, “We are building a very strong wall to prevent terrorists from entering, leaving and transferring weapons to our country.”

President Erdogan said that “where appropriate, we will do the same along the Iran-Iraq border.”

Greece has also built a 200 km long wall with state-of-the-art equipment on the Turkish border.

On this wall too, far-seeing cameras, sound canons and sensors powered by artificial intelligence have also been installed.

Greece has built this wall to prevent the influx of migrants from the Turkish border.

Turkey opened its border to thousands of migrants in February 2020, but Greece still kept its border completely closed.

Human rights groups accuse Greek border guards of pushing back migrants, shooting at them and killing them.

In Greece, the right wing has praised the construction of a wall on the Turkish border. However, Turkey has called the wall of Greece “the wall of shame”. Turkey reminded that the European Union had helped Greece in the construction of the wall.

The EU has increased the budget of the EU border agency Front X in recent years to prevent migrants from entering Europe.

To prevent migrants from entering Europe, the European Union struck a controversial agreement with Turkey in March 2016, under which it paid Turkey money in exchange for stopping migrants from entering Europe.

The Turkish wall is being built at a time when there are reports that hundreds of displaced Afghans are trying to enter Turkey via Iran. Because of the announcement of the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, the risk of civil war in Afghanistan has increased.

Mateen Kora Betar said the situation in Afghanistan would lead to an increase in the number of displaced people trying to enter Turkey.

The hashtag #SinirlarariKapat is running in Turkey after reports of displacement of people from Afghanistan, which means close the borders.

Turkey has stressed the importance of building a wall along the border with Iran, but has denied attempts by Afghans to enter Turkey.

Turkey’s Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Chatkali has said Turkey will use special forces to stop attempts to cross the border illegally until the wall is completed.

In the coming times, the Turkish side is likely to take a strict attitude regarding security and displaced people.