The Turkish authorities have started erecting a wall on the frontier with Syria in what is being seen as an attempt to divide the Kurdish majority populations on both sides of the border, prompting protests and hunger strikes, and jeopardising peace talks.

Without informing the local government in the town of Nusaybin in south-eastern Turkey, the authorities sent in construction crews recently to start erecting a two-metre-high wall on the border with Qamishli in north-eastern Syria. The sudden building project is stoking fears that more walls are planned.

The Nusaybin mayor, Ayse Gökkan, has spent several days on a "death fast" at the site this week in protest at what she calls the "wall of shame". About 50 others joined the hunger strike, according to local reports, and a big protest march is planned against alleged anti-Kurdish provocation.

According to Turkish newspaper reports on Friday morning, the wall construction has been stopped temporarily and mayor has stopped her hunger strike.

The Turkish interior ministry said last month the wall was being built "for security reasons", and to curb smuggling and illegal crossings, allegations that Kurdish community leaders on both sides of the frontier dispute strongly.

"There have never been fire fights across this border," Gökkan said. "The terrain is completely flat and can be easily monitored. There are landmines. This is probably the safest bit of our border with Syria."

Gökkan is from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party (BDP), while Qamishli and its surroundings are currently controlled by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the biggest Kurdish political group in Syria.

"Why do they not build walls further west, where rebel fighters and al-Qaida are allowed to cross the border freely?" Gökkan asked.

She was also angry at a lack of consultation. "One morning we were told that construction machines had damaged a water pipe close to the municipality building. There was a construction crew, digging without authorisation, and without our knowledge."

All Gökkan's inquiries to ministries and government offices went unanswered. "I learned about the wall from the newspapers," she said. Most locals strongly oppose what they see as an attempt to divide their community. "We don't call it Nusaybin and Qamishli, or Turkey and Syria," said one woman who wished to remain anonymous. "It has always been 'this side of the fence' and 'the other side of the fence'. We are all inter-married, we all have family on the other side. Many have dual citizenship. This wall is an effort to separate Kurds in the region, and nothing else."

The mayor warned that the anti-Kurdish move could sabotage ongoing peace talks between Ankara and the Kurdish militants of the PKK aimed at ending the 30-year-old Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.

"The wall is a declaration of war against Kurds by the Turkish government," she said. "What kind of peace are they trying to achieve by driving a wall between us?"

Many on both sides of the frontier see the wall as the latest evidence of perceived Turkish government support for Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who have been attacking Kurdish villages in Syria, killing and displacing thousands, while also fighting the Assad regime.

Many Syrian Kurds who have fled to Turkey are angry too.

"We don't want this," a 56-year-old woman explained. "It is reassuring to know that the rest of your family is right there in Qamishli. The wall would cut us off completely from our relatives. Three of my daughters are still in Syria."

"If a wall now goes up between me and them, I would constantly worry at every gunshot, every explosion that I hear without being able to see Qamishli."

Ismail Boubi, head of a local Syrian-Turkish aid organisation who fled Syria for Nusaybin 14 years ago, demanded that the wall be halted, the minefields cleared and the barbed wire dismantled.

"Refugees scramble through dangerous territory to get here. It is extremely hard to get aid into the north-eastern part of Syria. If the border was open, people would not have to resort to smuggling, and they would also go back to their own towns much faster.

"The construction of the wall demolishes democracy. This is not what we need. We need more trust, more freedom, and more co-operation."