Syrian farmers trapped by 'Erdogan's wall'
Military unrest combined with drought is making it much harder to draw a living from the soil along the Turkish-Syrian border.
DARBASIYAH, SYRIA — It’s a hot, windless September day in Darbasiyah, a sub-district of Syria’s al-Hasakah province. Under a scorching sun, a dozen agricultural workers – most of them children – pull out onions from the powdery soil. Behind their backs is a gray concrete wall topped by ominous watchtowers.
This is “Erdogan’s wall,” nicknamed after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who started building it in 2015, allegedly to secure the Syrian-Turkish border and limit new refugee arrivals to Turkey.
Crowned by razor wire, the three-meter-high wall has become a defining feature of northern Syria’s landscape, running along nearly 800 kilometers of the border.
