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.
