When the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis defended his decision in an interview with the “Bild” newspaper to urgently extend the border fence between Greece and Turkey by a further 35 kilometers, he had two goals in mind: he wanted to get support for his within the EU Promote projects and at the same time score points in the Greek election campaign. Articles about Greek politicians in major foreign media are picked up by the Greek press and widely discussed.
The Greek border fence evokes associations. During his tenure as US President, Donald Trump planned to build a wall on the border with Mexico to stop illegal immigration into the US. The fence was originally supposed to be several thousand kilometers long and made of concrete, steel or other materials.
Trump claimed that the wall was necessary to ensure US security and fight drug trafficking. However, critics argued that the wall would be expensive and ineffective to build and that there are better ways to combat illegal immigration. Even under Trump’s successor Joe Biden, the debate on this is not over.
Fulfilled election promises in Greece
In Greece, the government wants to create facts before the parliamentary elections on May 21st. The international tender for the 99.2 million euro fence extension is expected in the days after Greek Easter, i.e. this week. Completion this year is to be contractually fixed.
It is the second major expansion of the border bulwark that Mitsotakis wants to use to stop illegal overland immigration. When he took office, almost 12.5 kilometers of the approximately 200-kilometer border were cordoned off with a fence. There have been numerous cases of refugees from Turkey climbing over or tunneling under the fence, which was completed in 2012 and is between 2.5 and 3.5 meters high. The fence along the border river Evros was repeatedly damaged by floods.
Immediately after taking office in July 2019, Mitsotakis implemented his election promise and strengthened border security measures. The existing fence was reinforced with additional barbed wire, the foundation widened and the structure raised to a height of five metres.
The border fence with Türkiye now has a length of 38 kilometers
The government felt vindicated when, shortly before the pandemic in February and March 2020, the attempt by tens of thousands of refugees from Turkey to reach Greece failed. Unlike today, Greek-Turkish relations were at a low point. The Greek government described the refugees arriving via Turkey as a “weapon of a hybrid war”. The strengthening of the border was propagated in martial war rhetoric as a defensive measure.
From October 2020, the fence was extended by 27 kilometers to 38 kilometers within just under six months. In January, the Government Council for Foreign Affairs and Defense decided to expand the fence to a total length of 140 kilometers.
How effective is the fence?
Proponents of the border fence argue that it is effective in curbing illegal migration. For the Greek Prime Minister, Turkey is a safe third country where there is no war. Therefore there can be no refugees from Turkey to Greece.
Civil Protection Minister Takis Theodorikakos fears that more refugees can be expected after the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Neither of them should have missed the fact that the two main opponents in the Turkish presidential election campaign, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, promise their voters to expel the 3.5 million Syrians in the country.
Theodorikakos told radio station SKAI last Tuesday that the police stopped 270,000 illegal border crossings at the land border last year. For him, expanding the fence is “a national security work of the highest priority.”
Two weeks earlier, the police reporting to the minister had presented their statistics with slightly different figures. For 2022, 256,060 refused border crossings were recorded, compared to 175,301 the year before. In the last year before the current government took office, there were 99,702. How these numbers come about cannot be independently verified.
Critics accuse Greece of illegal pushbacks
The statistics of people who have come and registered in the country are more reliable. According to police statistics, exactly 17,000 refugees came into the country by land or sea in 2022, 8,745 in 2021 and 14,848 before that. At the peak of the refugee crisis in 2015, 874,735 refugees were registered with the police. The decline in numbers was mainly due to the fence and, according to Mitsotakis, the legal rejection of refugee boats at sea. Critics accuse Greece of carrying out illegal pushbacks.
The left-wing ex-civic protection minister Nikos Toskas agrees that the fence makes sense, at least in part: His government kept the existing fence from 2015 to 2019 because it makes sense at difficult border sections, Toskas writes in the party newspaper Avgi.
According to Toskas, citing unnamed sources within the police force, the government-celebrated border closure is a fairy tale. Every night around 800 refugees and migrants cross the borders and travel unregistered to northern Europe, he claims.
“What if a kid gets stuck on the fence, what do you do then?”
Ironically, Mitsotakis’ Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, one of the stars in the cabinet, delivered the best arguments against the fence in April 2018. The trained lawyer, chief diplomat and former minister for civil protection criticized the fact that the fence would run entirely on Greek soil. In his role as opposition politician, he let the Greeks know that he doesn’t believe in fences as effective border protection.
“What if a kid gets stuck on the fence, what do you do then?” he asked at the time. Now, during the election campaign, he was asked about it by Apostolos Mangiriadis on the state television station ERT on Wednesday. He avoided a direct answer and tried to distance himself from his earlier statement, but noted smugly that when he was Minister for Citizen Protection he had protected the borders without a fence.
funding problems
The fence is a controversial campaign issue with which the government wants to shine. She tries to convince the EU that border protection is a pan-European task, but regularly fails with her demands for money from Brussels. People there are annoyed: EU Interior Commissioner Ylva Johansson already declared in 2021 that the EU would never provide EU budget funds for the construction and maintenance of fences and other border barriers.
This was confirmed by a decision by the EU Budget Committee at the end of March. Although EPP representatives in the committee also voted against EU funding for border fences, Mitsotakis sees himself as a victim of left and green forces incited by the Greek SYRIZA opposition.
Mitsotakis wants to demonstrate toughness
With or without EU funds, the fence must be built: it is important for the prime minister to demonstrate absolute toughness and determination when it comes to the fence. Because it’s about keeping the right-wing voters in line. They are in turmoil because the government has created legal, temporary migration for much-needed professionals in agriculture, fisheries, industry and tourism.
Following the example of the guest workers that Germany had recruited up until the 1960s, on April 3 the cabinet approved the entry of 168,000 workers from third countries. Right-wing populist parties see this as foreign infiltration. The left fears further pressure on the already low wages and the lack of rights for workers.
