Governor of Turkey's northwester province of Edirne has said a Greek plan to build a fence on its border with Turkey would help Greece keep out illegal migrants.
"A physical barrier will come in handy for Greece to prevent illegal migration," Gokhan Sozer told the Anadolu Agency on Monday.
Greece's Citizen Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis said last Saturday that the Greek government was planning to construct a fence along the 206-kilometer border with Turkey to stem the flow of nearly 11 thousand illegal migrants each year.
"Turkish security forces are exerting intense efforts to prevent illegal migrants from passing into Greece and detain many of them. But I believe that Greece is having hard times to keep them out," Sozer said.
In the six months up to the end of November, 33,000 illegal immigrants have been detected crossing the Greek-Turkish land border. Most are from Afghanistan, Algeria, Pakistan, Somalia and Iraq.
Since November, European Union teams have been patrolling along the border with Greek police.
It is the first time that a team of the EU's Rapid Border Intervention agency Frontex has been deployed to an EU member state since the teams were created in 2007.
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