Security is a multifaceted concept in today’s world. This conceptinvolves political, economic, legal, sociological, psychological,technological, and geographical factors besides military security. For thisreason, security has been interpreted based on the notions of risk andthreat in recent studies, and the spiral relationship between these hasoften been emphasized. Over the last years, statistical and probabilitybasedcalculations have gained popularity, and risk studies have begunto be used commonly in several areas. This situation has especially pavedthe way for studies on security risk. This is because security risk is nota phenomenon which is procured or avoided from. In addition, it may notbe possible to compensate for the damage it causes.The strategic location of Turkey has made it a target countrybesides gaining the status of a country of transit more every passing day.That has especially brought along an increase in the number ofsmuggling cases. While 13,896 operations were made about smugglingcrimes in Turkey in 2010, this figure reached up to 17.776 in 2011 andto 22.466 in 2012. As a result of all these operations, 16.4 million litresof fuel oil, 241.000 mobile phones, 99.1 million boxes of cigarette, 1.378tones of smuggled tea, and 2.438 immigrants were caught. Furthermore,the distribution of smuggling cases across Turkey has changed. In thisregard, the province with the highest record of smuggling cases, which is1771, is Hatay while Tunceli has the least number of records with 3. Theother provinces exceeding one hundred are Adana with 1465 cases,Gaziantep with 1080 cases, and Mersin with 1015 cases.The most striking effect of the smuggling cases in Turkey isobserved in immigration and terror incidents. Hence, due to the civilunrest experienced in neighboring countries, a sharp increase has beenrecorded in the number of illegal immigration incidents in Turkey locatedon the transportation route between source and target countries. Due tothe increasing number of terror incidents since the mids of 1990 and theterror organization’s hampering the transportation serving for bordertrade, the population living in the border provinces and engaged in bordertrade began to go out of business because of security concerns. For thisreason, border security and border security planning have become highlyimportant.In the present study, it is aimed to carry out a security risk analysison Hatay - Syria border. In this analysis, border violations and smugglingcases were taken into account. Thus, secure and insecure points were determined on the border to prevent illegal entry. Hatay’s position in thetop 20 in terms of the number of the cases of smuggling through differentways in 2012 made this study necessary. This study is also veryimportant for being carried out in a location where the neighbourhoodrelations between Turkey and Syria have become tense, and smugglingcases are intensively observed.The study area is in southern Turkey and covers a 10 km-area inthe Hatay side of the Hatay-Syria border. This area was found to be withinthe second-degree land military forbidden zone defined in the Article 8 ofthe Law on “Military Forbidden Zones and Security Zones” dated 1981and numbered 2565. The study area has an area of 1736 km² and isadministratively located within the borders of Reyhanlı, Hassa, andYayladağı districts. In the study area, there are 2 border gates: Cilvegözü(Reyhanlı) and Yayladağı. Furthermore, there are nearly 64 policestations on the border route.In the present study, Turkey’s 1/25.000 scaled topographic mapsheets prepared by the Command of Mapping were used as the mainmaterials. Based on these maps, the geomorphology, slope index, sloperoughness, and slope position factor maps and the maps showing thedistance to rivers and roads were drawn and the spatial data about thementioned area (e.g. settlement areas, hills) were obtained. Throughremote sensing techniques, Cnes/Spot Image satellite image dated4/15/2014 in the Google Earth (KMZ) format was used in order to drawfactor maps showing the distance to the border, the effect of policestations, the border gates, and border effect. Also, both satellite imageand the factor map showing land use were created based on the digitalland use maps (1/25.000-scaled) prepared by the Ministry of Food,Agriculture and Livestock. The factor map showing the populationdensity was drawn through the interpolation of 2012 census data(Address-Based Population Registration System) from the TurkishStatistical Institute. Also, the ArcGIS/ArcMap 10.3 software, which is oneof the GIS (Geographic Information Systems) programs, was used fordrawing the thematic maps of the study area and the analysis of thefactor maps.Carried out through the multi-criteria analysis method integratedwith GIS techniques, the present study was designed for the assessmentof border violation cases and the security risks in terms of smuggling.During the application of the method, the factors considered to have aneffect on the security risk analysis were determined taking into accountthe features of the study area and the local data collected through fieldworks. Afterwards, the related factors were separated into value classesthrough simple additive weighting and accordingly impact and weightvalues were assigned. Based on these values, the following order wasdetermined: “0: No effect, 1: Absolutely secure, 2: Secure, 3: Slightlysecure 4: Insecure”. After the values were assigned, analysis was made.In this regard, factor maps with a resolution of 10x10 m were created ingrid format based on the impact values of all parameters in the first place.These maps were merged using the Raster Calculator, which is one ofSpatial Analyst tools, based on the weight values, and the areal andspatial distribution of security risk se