Turkey closes border gates with Syria for one month

Turkey’s Customs and Trade Minister Hayati Yazıcı announced today in a written statement that Hatay’s Yayladağı Customs gate is closed for a month.

“We’re closely observing and controlling the border gates between Syria and Turkey. We’ve closed Yayladağı border gate after the sad event in Reyhanlı [the bombings May 11 that caused death of more than 50 people] to prevent suspects’ flee. We’ve emphasized the situation since then and decided that security risks are quite high. It’s the only gate where people from Syria enter and get out of Turkey,” Yazıcı said.

Yazıcı also underlined that the technical infrastructure of the gate is not sufficient for preventing security risks.