23 August, GREECE : Greece has also installed a new surveillance system along its border with Turkey, the Reuters news agency reported, adding that the country is taking all measures to alert its border forces, making sure it does not become Europe’s gateway again.Written by Joydeep Bose | Edited by Meenakshi Ray, Hindustan Times, New DelhiPUBLISHED ON AUG 22, 2021 01:00 PM IST
Greece has finished erecting a 40 kilometre-fence on its border with Turkey to deter possible asylum seekers from knocking at its door following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. “We cannot wait, passively for the possible impact,” the country’s citizens’ protection minister Michalis Chrisochoidis told reporters on Friday. “Our borders will remain safe and inviolable.” The development comes amid apprehensions in Europe, which is still living under the shadow of a migrant crisis triggered by the 2015 Syrian war, of a renewed influx of migrants into the continent triggered by the Taliban’s Afghanistan offensive.
Greece has also installed a new surveillance system along its border with Turkey, the Reuters news agency reported, adding that the country is taking all measures to alert its border forces, making sure it does not become Europe’s gateway again.
Chrisochoidis, the Greek minister, said that the extension to the existing 12.5-kilometre fence on the border with Turkey had been completed in recent days, as well as a hi-tech, automated electronic monitoring system.
Greece and Turkey, Nato allies and historic rivals, have long been at odds over migrant issues and competing territorial claims in the eastern Mediterranean.
Nearly a million people had fled war and poverty in the Middle East following the Syrian war, finding their way to Greece from Turkey, before travelling northward to wealthier states. However, the migrant arrivals, either by land or by sea, slowed in recent years (since 2016) when the EU agreed on a deal with Turkey to stem the flows in exchange for financial support.
