Turkey builds wall in token effort to secure border with Syria

[World News]

By Dasha Afanasieva REYHANLI, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkey has started building a new wall along a fragment of its southeastern border with Syria as it struggles against smuggling, illegal migration and the threat from al Qaeda fighters among Syria's rebel ranks. Slabs of concrete have sprung up in recent days, snaking for just over one kilometer over the rolling hills of Hatay province, a finger of land which was part of Syria until the late 1930s, dotted with villages that have thrived on an illicit cross-border trade in everything from fuel to cigarettes. Turkey has kept an open-border policy throughout Syria's three-year civil war and has vowed to maintain it, providing a lifeline to rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad by allowing supplies in and refugees out. That has compounded the challenge of securing the 900-km (560-mile) border for Turkey's authorities, already accused of doing too little to stop foreign jihadists from entering Syria and posing an even bigger risk to the wider region.

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