Greece’s prime minister makes border wall an election pledge

By COSTAS KANTOURIS and DEREK GATOPOULOS
Associated Press

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greece’s prime minister has promised to extend a wall across all of the country’s land border with Turkey. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected on Friday to sign his center-right government’s decision to nearly double the length of the existing steel border wall over the next year. The wall currently spans 37.5 kilometers (25 miles), and the government plans to extend it by 35 kilometers. Government officials say more than 100 kilometers of wall will be added to that by 2026. While campaigning earlier for Greece’s May 21 general election, Mitsotakis accused the left-wing Syriza party of trying to undermine the project and planning to “tear down the wall that we have already built.”