Turkey-Syria border wall to be completed by end-Sept.

The construction of a concrete barrier along hundreds of kilometers of Turkey’s border with Syria is expected to be completed by the end of September, a Turkish official said on Friday.

A total of 731 kilometers (454 miles) of the border wall has already been finished, the official told Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity.

The remaining 97km (60 miles) of wall will be completed by the end of this month, the official added.

As part of Turkey’s measures to increase border security and combat smuggling and illegal border crossings, Ankara launched the construction project in 2015 to build 828km (514 miles) of walls.

Turkey shares a 911km (566-mile) border with Syria, which has been embroiled in a civil war since 2011.

The border wall project incorporates physical, electronic and advanced technology layers.

The physical layer includes modular concrete walls, patrol routes, manned and unmanned towers and passenger tracks.

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.

An electronic layer consists 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.

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.