ANKARA: After sealing a significant part of its border with Syria with a 560-mile-long barrier, Turkey has now started to construct a security wall along its border with Iran in Agri province, with the aim of preventing border smuggling and illegal crossings by terrorists.
The wall is being built by Turkey’s state-owned construction enterprise TOKI.
In a statement before the latest annual Supreme Military Council meeting on Aug. 2, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced that as a security precaution, the government had accelerated its measures under the “integrated border security program” against terrorist infiltration of Turkey’s southern border.
Prof. Mehmet Seyfettin Erol, head of Ankara-based think-tank ANKASAM (Ankara Center for Crisis and Policy Studies), said Turkey had undertaken the construction of the new wall to help maintain its relationship with Iran.
“This wall is a deterrent against an unauthorized immigrant influx. Although this does not change Turkey’s humanitarian policy for Syrian immigrants, it now intends to follow a more regular approach toward immigration,” Erol told Arab News. He cited rising instability in the region, the emergence of radical terrorist groups, and a network of Kurdish militants spread across several countries as further reasons behind the decision.
“The walls cannot prevent terrorist attacks on their own. However, they deter people, and complement a country’s efforts for border management,” he said.
In March, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak announced that some 3 million new refugees from Iran — mostly Afghans — could attempt to come to Turkey.
“A total of 30,000 refugees came in through the eastern Turkish provinces of Igdir and Agri in 2016 alone,” Kaynak said during an interview with CNN Turk, adding that about 3,000 unauthorized migrants had already crossed into Turkey from Iranian border since the beginning of 2017.
Metin Gurcan, an ex-military officer and security analyst at the Istanbul Policy Center, said this wall should be seen as preparation for — and part of the transition to — the post-Daesh period.
He said that one of the reasons for Daesh’s emergence was the ease with which the group was able to move people and military equipment across borders, adding that smuggling had proved to be “an important financing tool for extremism.”
“Iran and Ankara have convergent interests in the region for preventing extremism and smuggling,” Gurcan told Arab News.
According to Gurcan, effective management of the border will be beneficial for both countries because it will help prevent the spread of regional Kurdish groups across the Iran-Turkey border. He explained that, for geographic reasons, protecting that border is very challenging.
“Turkey will not only construct a wall, but it will use a technology-intensive approach, with the use of smart towers, thermal imaging, unmanned weapons systems and other surveillance capacities, backed by unarmed drones,” Gurcan added.
The head of the Ankara-based Center for Iranian Studies (IRAM), Ahmet Uysal, said the wall would protect the Turkish people from external security threats linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and other related organizations that are financed by income from smuggling.
“Refugees and asylum seekers from Iran, Afghanistan and even Pakistan also use this route to reach the West,” Uysal told Arab News.
“Iran is well known as a leader of armed militias in the Middle East,” Dr. Ali Bakeer, an independent expert on Iran-Turkey relations, told Arab News. “Tehran has proved that it has the ability and the will to use terrorist organizations to achieve political goals and to blackmail regional players.”
Bakeer added that building a wall on the Iranian border is part of Turkey’s comprehensive plan to secure its borders against non-state actors and terrorist organizations.
Turkey plans to construct security wall on Iranian border
Turkey plans to construct security wall on Iranian border
Inaction over UAE’s role is prolonging ‘worst proxy war in the world,’ Sudan justice minister says
- Had international community characterized it as ‘military rebellion’ and countered Emirati sponsorship of ‘terrorist militia’ it would not have endured, he tells UN Human Rights Council
- He accuses paramilitary Rapid Support forces of ‘targeting basic infrastructure, strategic facilities and public services,’ and ‘atrocities beyond our capacity to describe’
NEW YORK CITY: Sudan’s justice minister on Wednesday blamed the prolongation of the near-three-year conflict in his country on what he described as the failure of the international community to properly label the war as a rebellion.
He also accused the UAE of sponsoring and arming a militia, the Rapid Support Forces, he said was responsible for widespread abuses.
“The war has outstayed its welcome and it should not have gone on for this long had the international community, and particularly the UN and its bodies, fulfilled their responsibility in rightly characterizing this military rebellion,” said Abdullah Mohammed Dirif, “and had they called a spade a spade and countered the Abu Dhabi government, which sponsored this terrorist militia and provided it with high-tech arms and provided it with mercenaries.”
Speaking during the high-level segment of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, he warned that “the misleading characterization of this war has given a green light for the militia to keep its flagrant violations.”
The minister, who said he was speaking “on behalf of the government of Sudan and its people,” described the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF, which began in April 2023, as “one of the worst proxy wars in the world,” which had “targeted the very existence of Sudan and its people.”
The RSF has “continued its methodic targeting of basic infrastructure and strategic facilities and all public services,” Dirif said, adding that “the aim is to displace civilians against whom it has committed atrocities beyond our capacity to describe them.
“The violations and crimes of the militia are going unabated. Yesterday it invaded Moustahiliya region in northern Darfur. It targeted civilians, killed them. It looted. It scorched villages and cities.”
Sudan’s military was “conducting its constitutional responsibility by standing up to the militia, protecting the civilians, preserving the unity of the country and the rule of law,” he said, and it remains “committed to international humanitarian law and the rules governing military engagement, and taking into account proportionality principles in order to protect civilians.”
Khartoum remains “open to genuine efforts which aim to end the war and the rebellion” based on a road map presented by the president of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, and a peace initiative submitted by the prime minister to the UN Security Council on Dec. 22, he added.
Dirif stressed his government’s commitment to continued “cooperation and coordination with human rights mechanisms in Sudan,” including the presence of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the country and the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Sudan.
“We recall, nationally, that achieving justice and redress to victims and ensuring impunity is a top priority for us,” he said, adding that authorities had made progress by investigating violations of national laws and international humanitarian laws.
He also underscored Sudan’s “commitment to continue facilitating and expediting delivery of humanitarian assistance to those affected by the war, including those under the control of the rebellious militia.”
Later, Sudan’s representative to the UN in Geneva exercised his right of reply and responded to prior remarks by the representative from the UAE.
“This is not a mere accusation, it is a well-known fact that is predicated on a number of evidence and documented proofs,” he said, referring to the UAE’s sponsorship of the RSF.
He cited in particular a report by a UN panel of experts on Sudan published on Jan. 15, 2024, which he described as “an official document of the Security Council” that referred to “lines of transferring weapons from Abu Dhabi International Airport” based on “clear-cut evidence.”
Other major international organizations and Sudan’s national commission of inquiry have provided further proof, he added, and Khartoum had submitted “a number of complaints, with proof, to the Security Council of the proven sabotage by the Abu Dhabi authority.”
The Sudanese representative continued: “It is paradoxical that the same authority that is sponsoring criminal militia, that the whole world is seeing and is attesting to its crimes, is now talking about peace in the Sudan. Peace is a noble value, that you have to be full of peace before you talk about it.
“The people of Sudan are only requesting this country stop sponsoring this criminal militia that is killing the innocent people in my country on a daily basis.”
The UAE has denied accusations that it provides military support to armed groups in Sudan, and says it supports efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
