Turkey to build 500-mile wall on Syria border after Isil Suruc bombing
Turkey to build 500-mile wall on Syria border after Isil Suruc bombing –
The Telegraph – The Turkish government has announced plans for a high-level security barrier along its 500-mile border with Syria, three days after a suicide attack in the border town of Suruc left 32 dead.
Bulent Arinc, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, announced a “renewed effort” to “avoid the entry of terrorists and the foreign fighters and to ease humanitarian passages” after a cabinet meeting in Ankara.
“A physical security system will be established along the border,” Mr Arinc said, according to the Turkish state news agency, Anadolu.
“The critical issue here is preventing the entry of terrorists [into Turkey] and taking physical measures along the border against the Daesh threat,” he continued, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) by its Arabic acronym.
Local media outlet Daily Sabah published a graphic on Wednesday depicting the proposed security system, which included a concrete wall topped with barbed wire, a dedicated patrol road, and a strengthened fence.
It will also have 24-hour surveillance with drones, mobile surveillance vehicles, and an integrated command and control centre.
Thousands of foreign fighters are thought to have travelled through Turkey to join Isil in Syria and Iraq in the past few years, some of them with assistance from Turkish smuggling networks sympathetic to the militants.
The Suruc bombing, whose victims included Kurds, enraged Turkey’s Kurdish minority, many of whom suspect the government of tacitly backing Isil in Syria against Kurdish forces, something Ankara strongly denies.
The Kurdish guerrilla force the PKK claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish police officers in the town of Ceylanpınar on Tuesday. The murders were described as retaliation for the Suruc bombing, according to Turkish state news.