The announcement on Thursday comes a day after the Turkish and US presidents discussed border security by phone. It follows a surge in violence in Turkey that includes a suicide bombing Monday claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group that killed 32 people in the town of Suruc in Turkey’s southeast.
Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily newspaper on Thursday quoted official sources as saying the new border security system will include two fences running parallel, with a road in between, complete with observation towers.
The new system will be built in high-risk areas of the border, which has reportedly seen jihadi fighters and convoys of ISIS supplies passing through, and Syrian war refugees flooding in.
Turkey says it is now hosting some 2 million war refugees from Syria and it has been criticized by the United States and other allies in the anti-ISIS coalition that accuse Ankara of turning a blind eye to its border being freely used by ISIS.
On Wednesday US President Barack Obama spoke with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The US president agreed to help Washington’s NATO ally secure its southeastern border.
A White House statement following the talk said the two leaders agreed to increase efforts to “stem the flow of foreign fighters and secure Turkey's border with Syria.”
In the latest violence, suspected ISIS militants fired at a Turkish military outpost from inside Syria on Thursday, killing a Turkish soldier and wounding two others, according to news reports.
Turkish officials say they have detained more than 500 ISIS suspects over the past six months, and that this month they arrested 21 people recruiting for the militant group.
Hurriyet reported that a moat along the border is also part of the new security plan: the ditch will cover 450-kms along the border. Drones, thermal cameras and motion detectors are other features of the new border security system.
The new measures will cost around 4.2 billion Turkish liras (more than $1.5 billion). The daily reported.
Hurriyet said that about half of its border security patrol is now deployed along the Syrian frontier.
It reported that 90 percent of its military drones and about half of the military’s armored vehicles also were currently deployed along the border with Syria.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arınc, whose cabinet met Wednesday with the commander of the country’s ground forces, told reporters that day that ISIS – or Daesh, as the group is also known --- must be “blocked” on the border.
“What is important in the face of Daesh is to block the terrorists’ transit points and to have physical obstacles to this. A physical security system will be established at the border,” he said.
