Turkey begins building 8.5-km wall on Greek border

Tamer Yavuz / Gazete Duvar

Governor of Turkey's westernmost Edirne province, Yunus Sezer, on March 4 held a press conference on security, public order, and traffic issues.

Sezer said that an 8.5-kilometer wall would be built along the Greek border, as the first "physical security measure" on the western border.

“We started from the Greek border. We will continue depending on the situation in the future. It depends a bit on the budget, but it will be around 8.5 kilometers,” he said.

Sezer said that the local administration had constructed 325 kilometers of roads along the border line last September.

This year, they continued the work on building electro-optical towers and taking other measures with the support of the Interior and Defense Ministries.

As part of the border "reinforcement" project, the governorship would build physical walls and fences in areas where only patrol roads existed.

Greece, one of the gateways into the European Union for refugees and migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, has been accused by aid groups of forcibly ejecting migrants at its sea and land borders, also known as "pushbacks," an illegal practice.

Greece had reinforced border controls along its land and sea frontier with Turkey following the 2023 earthquakes amid expectations of a new wave of arrivals by displaced residents, according to reporting by the Guardian.