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Turkey installs 475 mile security wall on Syria border

June 10, 2018 at 2:40 pm

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

TOKI, the state backed housing developer, built 350 miles of the wall, while the governorates of the border provinces built 125 miles, the official told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity.

Ankara had launched the construction project in 2015 to build an 513 mile-long 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 566 mile 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.

Walls, drones and mines: Turkey tightens border as Syria incursion deepens

The 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 fibre-optic detection, surveillance radar for drone detection, jammers and sensor-triggered short distance lighting systems.