Turkey installs 764 km security wall on Syria border

By Ugur Aslanhan

GAZIANTEP, Turkey (AA) - Turkey has completed the construction of a 764-kilometer (475-mile) concrete wall along its border with Syria, according to a Turkish official on Saturday

TOKI, the state backed housing developer, built 564 km (350 mi) of the wall, while the governorates of the border provinces built 200 km (124 mi), the official told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity.

Ankara had launched the construction project in 2015 to build an 826-km (513-mi) wall on the Syrian border, as part of Turkey’s measures to increase border security and combat smuggling and illegal border crossings.

Turkey shares a 911-km (566-mi) border with Syria, which has been embroiled in a civil war since 2011.

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

The official added the state housing developer's construction of a 144-km wall on its Iranian border had almost completed.

- Characteristics of wall

The border wall project incorporates physical, electronic and advanced technology layers.

The physical layer includes modular concrete walls, patrol routes, manned and unmanned towers and passenger tracks.

Modular walls are being erected along the Turkish-Syrian borderline with seven-ton mobile blocks, two meters wide and three meters high. The blocks have also been topped with a one-meter-high razor wire.

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.