KILIS, Turkey — Donald Trump isn’t the only one who thinks walls are the answer to an unchecked immigration crisis.
In an old neighborhood in this ancient city, stone walls stained with soot lead to narrow alleyways where Syrian refugees make homes in dilapidated buildings.
Before the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Kilis had a population of 90,000. That number is now 230,000, with Syrians outnumbering Turks. It’s common to hear Arabic on the street. Sweetshops offer Syrian pastries sprinkled with ground pistachio.
The war has brought strained social services, cultural changes, and violence. Last year, rockets launched from Syria killed 25 Kilis residents. Suicide bombers involved in more than 20 attacks in Turkey allegedly were among the foreign fighters passing through the border city.
Those attacks led the Turkish government to build a border wall, half of which is completed, near the city. When finished, the wall will span Turkey’s 560-mile border with Syria. The 10-foot wall with razor wires and 7-ton concrete blocks is intended to keep out extremist militants and smugglers, Turkish officials said.
“The flow of foreign fighters is much less now that the Turkish army is controlling the border,” said one Turkish policeman in Kilis, who declined to give his name because he didn’t have official permission to comment.
As with Mr. Trump’s planned wall along the Mexican border, a barrier to seal off Turkey’s long border with Syria presents engineering and security challenges.
The wall will be backed by a mined area. Government engineers are also digging ditches and erecting fortified fences, along with thermal imaging cameras atop 30-foot-high steel watchtowers to catch anyone trying to cross at night, the Reuters news agency reported. Drones have been deployed to patrol the skies above the border.
Refugee numbers and illegal smuggling have gone down sharply as the wall has gone up, Ankara officials say, and the danger posed by Islamic State terrorist group has eased.
“It looks like the Turks have finally, successfully, closed their last stretch of border with ISIS,” Sam Heller, Beirut-based fellow at The Century Foundation think tank, told the news agency. “They probably could have done it sooner, but this was something that was subject to other political calculations and considerations.”
As in the U.S., refugee advocates have criticized the border wall.
“The wall is a further indication that the Turkish government is determined to stop people, including refugees, coming through,” said Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s Turkey researcher, told Deutsche Welle, calling on Ankara to establish clear passage points for civilians fleeing deadly violence.
Local support
Celal Aricicegi is among the Kilis residents who support the wall. “It’s a good thing because then we can show that this is our land, that we can secure our borders,” he said.
Still, the wall is not universally popular. An obstacle to refugees, it also harms cross-border trade and divides families, some locals say.
“Turkish people and Syrians have families across the borders. This wall doesn’t benefit any people or country,” said Mehmet Ali Aslan, a member of the Turkish parliament from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party. “When we see these walls, we feel a distance, a limit, a ban. When people look at these walls, they feel insecure instead of secure.”
Kilis is 3 miles from the Syrian border. Turkey hosts almost 3 million refugees of the 6-year-old civil war, which the United Nations estimates has killed 400,000 people.
Many Turks in Kilis have accepted the Syrians in their midst. They have offered employment and housing and even intermarried with the refugees.
“Kilis residents share their city, their streets and even their air with Syrians,” said Kilis Mayor Hasan Kara.
The once-sleepy town has been transformed into a bustling center, complete with outdoor bazaars and Syrian businesses that offer a variety of foods and services. Syrian children learn Turkish, and their parents try to teach their neighbors Arabic.
“The Turkish were very good to us,” said Nur, a 20-year-old Syrian refugee who asked that her last name be withheld for security reasons. She married a Turkish man in Kilis, and they now have two children. Nur has learned Turkish as she teaches her husband Arabic.
Still, when violence crosses the border, tensions flare.
Erdal Ufak, a barber and Turkish citizen, lost his father, Ismail, 49, in one of the rocket attacks in April last year. Mr. Ufak’s father was playing cards outside with his friends. He died after suffering with lung and rib injuries for a week.
Mr. Ufak, 25, said he is frustrated because the Turkish government has failed to protect Kilis residents. “It’s useless for me to be angry now because I already lost my father,” he said. “The government and the public made a mistake in accepting so many Syrians.”
Turkish generosity may be wearing thin for other reasons.
Kilis rents doubled in some neighborhoods after the Syrians began arriving. An apartment that cost $120 shot up to $300 a month.
Favoring refugees?
Meanwhile, there is some bitterness among locals who say the Turkish government favors the refugees over the residents.
In July during Ramadan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke in Kilis. Turkish residents expected to hear him talk about compensating bombing victims and more job opportunities. Instead, Mr. Erdogan, who has strong support among many Sunni Syrian refugees, promised citizenship to the Syrians in Kilis.
“I was shocked. I wasn’t expecting something like that because he didn’t say anything about the bombs,” said a Turkish resident who was too afraid to give his name in the current political climate. “And when he said, ’I have a surprise for you,’ he told us it was an offer of citizenship to Syrians.”
Meanwhile, some worry about cultural changes. Many Turks fear the government’s push to dismantle Turkey’s secular laws will be shored up by what they perceive as Syrians’ more rigid, conservative brand of Islam.
Turkish secular law forbids polygamy, but many Turkish men are secretly marrying Syrian women as second and third wives. The result has been sharp rises in marriage and divorce, according to Turkish government statistics. Turkish women are reportedly leaving their polygamous husbands, who are in some cases wedding underage Syrian girls fleeing poverty and war.
Kinda Aricicegi, 30, a widowed mother from Syria, worries about her children because of such arrangements. She married Celal, a 65-year-old Turkish baker with a Turkish wife. They now have two children together. She would like the Turkish government to recognize their polygamous marriage.
“I don’t mind if he keeps his first wife, but I’m worried about my future and my kids’ future,” Ms. Aricicegi said.
In spite of the problems, some Turks said the changes are all part of life on the front lines.
Mehmet, a teacher, said he has many Syrian friends and that the best thing that could happen would be for the war to end so they could return to their homeland. Then there would be no need for walls.
“Not all Syrians are the same, and our relationship with them changes,” he said. “When something bad happens, some Turkish people become angry with them, and then things blow over and we’re back to getting along.”
• Ozge Sebzeci contributed to this report.
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