In a clear message to President Trump, Federica Mogherini had warned against those who wish to build walls. She said: “In Europe we have a history that has told that every time one invests in divisions and walls you might end up being in a prison if you build all walls around you.
“We have a history and a tradition that we celebrate when walls are brought down and bridges are built.”
The Turkish wall is being constructed by TOKI, Turkey’s state-owned construction enterprise, spanning the entire border with Syria and made of seven-tonne concrete blocks topped with razor wire, three metres high and two metres wide.
The wall runs through the provinces of Sanliurfa, Gaziantep, Kilis, Hatay, Mardin and Sirnak and incorporates physical, electronic and advanced technology layers of security.
Mogherini issued her own statement condemning Trump’s border wall with Mexico in 2017. The 43-year-old Italian pledged continued EU “support for Syrian refugees”. She said: “This is not the European Way. The EU will continue to take care and host Syrian refugees and others who are fleeing from war.”
The physical layer of the Turkish wall includes modular concrete walls, patrol routes, manned and unmanned towers and passenger tracks. It includes 120 border towers in critical locations as well as a security road with regular military patrols.
Construction was begun in 2014, and 781 km of the border wall was completed as of December 2017. The rest was completed in the middle of last year.
The construction of armored Cobra II military vehicles, which are now being used to patrol the border to Syria, was funded by the European Union, according to research conducted the European Investigative Collaborations network (EIC).
According to German weekly Der Spiegel: “The EU states have provided the government in Ankara with security and surveillance technology valued at more than 80 million euros in exchange for the protection of its borders.
“This included the transfer of 35.6 million euros by Brussels to the Turkish company Otokar as part of its IPA regional development program for the construction of armored Cobra II military vehicles, which are now being used to patrol the border to Syria.”
In 2016, under the guise of “humanitarian aid”, the EU pledged €3 billion to Turkey to stem the flow of Syrian refugees to the EU. In reality, this deal trapped the existing 3.5 million Syrians in Turkey.
The EU plans to mobilise an additional €3 billion to Turkey, a press release of the European Commission revealed.
Arms manufacturer Aselsan, of which the Turkish state owns a majority stake, was also commissioned by the EU to provide Ankara with 30 million euros worth of armored and non-armored surveillance vehicles for patrolling the Turkish-Greek land border, Spiegel noted.
Mogherini vowed the EU would continue to work with the Middle East and criticised Trump for targeting “certain religions” since he came to office even though Mexicans are mostly Catholic.
Rights groups documented security forces firing on fleeing Syrian civilians however. Turkish border forces were reported for having killed five Syrian asylum-seekers according to a rights group which called on the Turkish government to investigate the excessive use of force by its troops.
A New York-based rights advocacy group said in a report that five asylum-seekers – including a child – were killed and 14 others wounded in March and April of 2017 as a result of the border guards’ excessive use of force.
“EU officials should recognize that their red light for refugees to enter the EU gives Turkey a green light to close its border, exacting a heavy price on war-ravaged asylum seekers with nowhere else to go,” one activist told Deutsche Welle.
In April 2006 already, while Iraq was experiencing a high level of sectarian violence, Saudi Arabia began to call for tenders to construct a border wall with support from the EU.
As part of a larger package of fence-building to secure all of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s 6 500 kilometers of border, it supplemented the existing 7-meter-high sand berm that runs along the border, in front of which there is an 8-kilometer stretch of no-mans-land which is regularly swept smooth so that trespassers can be tracked.
The proposals were not implemented until September 2014, when the Iraq War had escalated following the rise of ISIS. Their occupation of much of western Iraq had given it a substantial land border with Saudi Arabia to the south, and the barrier is intended to keep ISIS militants from entering Saudi Arabia.
The border zone includes five layers of fencing with includes 78 monitoring watch towers, night-vision cameras, and radar cameras, eight command centres, 10 mobile surveillance vehicles, 32 rapid-response centres, and three rapid intervention squads.
The barrier is sometimes referred to as the Great Wall of Saudi Arabia. The works are done by Airbus, formerly EADS.
