Turkey sealing Syrian border with giant wall

Sefer Levent – ISTANBUL

After completing the tender process for a 200-kilometer-long section of the to-be built wall and preparing works for the remaining section, TOKİ was expecting to finish the “security wall” in five months, its head, Ergün Turan, said. The wall is expected to block uncontrolled human passage across the border.



“As far as our national security is concerned, the increase of border security with Syria carries huge importance. With the completion of the wall, our border will become more secure,” said Turan, adding that the concrete blocks would cover the entire border with their two-meter-wide and three-meter-high dimensions. Turan said the sections of the walls in the southeastern provinces of Hatay and Şanlıurfa were mostly completed and work was ongoing on other sections. He added that the blocks were portable, weighing seven tons each, and their tops were being covered with razor wire.



“We build the walls in a way that they can be moved away in the future if needed and as TOKİ they were not only dealing with pouring the cement and assembling the concrete but are also building a road behind the wall.



Turan said the work itself was very difficult and meticulous due to conditions at the construction site, as the area has mined fields. He added that in all five construction sites, there were 200 to 250 gigantic concrete blocks being produced for transfer to the border on trucks.



“When we say border, there is no road or anything there. As TOKİ, we open the roads. The job is not easy, we are working on mined fields,” Turan said, adding that Turkey was in a special situation as there were few countries in the world which shared a 900-kilometer-long border with a single country.

The Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKİ) has undertaken the construction of the remaining 700 kilometers of the wall being built on Turkey’s border with war-torn Syria, after the construction of the initial 200-kilometer-long concrete wall on the border was completed jointly by the Defense Ministry and neighboring provinces governor’s offices.