A Syrian woman, forced by the war to cancel her plans for marriage, tries on her dress in her new home in Turkey.

The old Turk came to the Syrian matchmaker with a wish list: his second wife should have green eyes, and be tall, white-skinned and no older than 17. He would pay well: more than £2,000 if the right girl could be found.

But he did not plan to stay married for long. Like many of the Turkish men who purchase Syrian teenage refugees as second wives, he would divorce her after a few months, once he had tired of her.

“The man wanted to have a good time,” said Mohammed Abu Jafar, the matchmaker, last week outside a hotel near Turkey’s border with Syria. “The woman’s family wanted money. That’s how it works.”

After six years of grinding civil war, almost 3m Syrian refugees live