Security on Turkish border beefed up

Greece is stepping up security on its porous land border with Turkey, which is used by thousands of migrants to clandestinely enter Europe, with extra guards supported by a network of powerful surveillance cameras.

The country is struggling with a surge of immigration through Turkey, and is now the main point of entry to Europe.

Greek island migrant camps, which receive most new arrivals, are dysfunctional and severely overcrowded, and this week details emerged of a plan to set up a floating barrier to block migrant boats in the Aegean Sea.

On the northeastern land border with Turkey, which mostly follows the Evros River, the army and police have launched joint patrols. Police were hiring 400 more border guards to be deployed locally, officials said.

Greece has already erected a 10-kilometre fence along part of the border where the river veers away, leaving dry land that migrants could easily walk across.

The 11 surveillance cameras will be erected on 50m-high stands, and will each be able to monitor a 10km stretch of the 200km border.

‘‘The cameras will cover what we can’t fully monitor with personnel in the field . . . because it’s a long stretch of river,’’ said Ilias Akidis, police union head in the nearby town of Orestiada.

Greece currently has the highest number of migrant arrivals in Europe, with about 75,000 last year – including more than 15,000 via the Evros, according to United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. While that’s still far from the nearly 1 million arrivals of 2015, at the peak of Europe’s immigration crisis, it’s up 50 per cent from 2018.

And unlike in 2015, when nearly all the migrants continued on to Europe’s prosperous heartland, most are ending up trapped in Greece following Balkan border closures. More than 112,000 people are stuck in Greece, according to the UNHCR.