The Turkish government has not let up on its fight against terrorism and illegal crossings across its borders. In the next 100 days, as per Ankara's action plan announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday, the construction of border walls and the establishment of state-of-the-art security systems will be completed.
In order to combat terrorism, smuggling and irregular migration, the Interior Ministry has been working non-stop to increase the security of the country's southern, eastern and western borders. The speeding up of the work on the border walls was announced Saturday in a written statement by the Interior Ministry.
The 100-day action plan states that the lighting of the 18-kilometer-long Iranian border with eastern Ağrı and Iğdır provinces will be completed in the next 100 days.
An 802-kilometer wall stretching across the eastern and southern parts of Turkey's borders was completed recently. In addition, construction of modular concrete walls and patrol roads along 43 kilometers of the Iranian border in southeastern Hakkari province will soon begin.
Ankara is paying the utmost attention to the security of its Iranian border after reports that the PKK had set up camps in the vicinity, hosting approximately 1,000 terrorists.
The wall will be constructed in order to prevent PKK terrorists from easily crossing the border to take shelter in the event of military operations in eastern Turkey.
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 one-meter-high razor wire.
Furthermore, on the Şanlıurfa-Syria border, solar-powered lighting, a camera tracking system and security sensors are almost finished.
If the solar-powered lighting system used for the first time at Şanlıurfa-Syria border proves to be successful, it will be applied to the entire Syrian border.
Ankara has deployed an electronic layer consisting 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 to protect its borders.
The advanced technology layer of the project includes wide area surveillance, laser destructive fiber-optic detection, surveillance radar for drone detection, jammers and sensor-triggered short distance lighting systems.
Ankara had launched the construction project in 2015 to build a more than 800-kilometer wall on the Syrian border, as part of Turkey's measures to increase border security and combat smuggling and illegal border crossings.
In addition to the security measures at Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian borders, the Turkish government will also reportedly boost security along their Armenian and Georgian borders.