Turkey will remove mines along the borders with Syria

Turkey's deputy prime minister Abdul Latif Ciner said that his country is planning to use the fertile agricultural lands on the borders with Syria after the removal of thousands of landmines.

There are still some 615,000 active mines on the Turkish side of the border planted during the tense relations between the two countries during the 50th during the cold war era and in the 1980s and 1990s when the Turkish forces were chasing the Kurdistani Workers Party.

Ciner told journalists in Ankara that he will ask for cleaning 30,000 hectares of arable border lands, a matter which will be conducive, by its turn to create work opportunities for more than 6,000 families.

He added: the change and improvement in the Syrian- Turkish relations permitted our government to clean this area and contribute to improvement of the economy."