Turkey has started building a new wall along a fragment of its southeastern border with Syria as it struggles against smuggling, illegal migration and the threat from armed groups.

Turkey has started building a new wall along a fragment of its southeastern border with Syria as it struggles against smuggling, illegal migration and the threat from armed groups.

Slabs of concrete have sprung up in recent days, snaking for just over one kilometer over the rolling hills of Hatay province, a finger of land which was part of Syria until the late 1930s, dotted with villages that have thrived on an illicit cross-border trade in everything from fuel to cigarettes.

Turkey has kept an open-border policy throughout Syria's three-year civil war and has vowed to maintain it, providing a lifeline to the gunmen battling the national military by allowing supplies in and refugees out.

But the policy has had its costs. Smuggling has thrived, and a growing number of Syrians forced by the war to eke out a living where they can, swell the ranks of those trying to cross back and forth outside the official border posts.

In the face of such a challenge, the wall seems a symbolic gesture, starting in a village called Kusakli, which an official from the district governorate called an active spot for border trespassing, and following the contours for over a kilometer.

Local people doubted the barrier would do much more than deter a few opportunist smugglers, while punishing legitimate refugees.