Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has underlined the difficulties and potential complications of a move by Turkey to close the border with Syria, as a report revealed Ankara’s anger over U.S. leadership’s insistence on using Turkish ground forces on the border to accomplish this goal.
“Keeping the entire border with Syria [closed] may come on the agenda as a project but then what will you do about transiting refugees? We have a moral responsibility along this 911-kilometer-long border and it is accepting refugees. We have a strategic responsibility and it is ensuring security of the border. Not having terrorists transition and any negative developments on the Turkey-Syria border are in Turkey’s interest. We have paid the highest price for Daesh’s terrorist activities,” Davutoğlu said on Dec. 3 in response to a question on border security, using the Arabic acronym Daesh to refer to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
“There is nothing more difficult than protecting a border on the other side of which there is no political authority. There is no functioning state system or counterpart administration on the other side. At the moment, around 98 kilometers of our border seem under Daesh control. In the past months we had given orders to build physical barriers on the entire border and these physical barriers are being built. Control is maintained through signal systems but beyond that we are conducting all kinds of works to eradicate Daesh from these 98 kilometers,” Davutoğlu said at a press conference ahead of his departure for an official visit to Baku.