By Ahmad Salah
It is not a secret that hundreds of mercenaries from Syria and Libya have been recently deployed to the disputed territories of Nagorno Karabakh. Thus Turkey is attempting to assist its brother state Azerbaijan in confrontation with Armenia.
Ankara has seemingly decided not to hide its illegal actions. Many foreign leaders have already expressed concern about Turkey’s aggressive policies. On October 2, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that his country had information on the transfer of jihadists to Azerbaijan. “It is a very serious new fact, which changes the situation,” he said.
The journalists of the US news channel CNN also managed to find out details about recruiting of the so-called “Syrian National Army” fighters by Turkish Armed Forces. According to the channel, Turkey promised Syrians about 1500 dollars a month to go to Azerbaijan. Syrian sources also confirm this information.
Some of those mercenaries themselves reveal the way how Turks carried out the recruitment and dispatch of fighters to the Caucasian State. The recruits were initially brought in there to ensure the protection of gas and oil pipelines. According to one of the fighters of the Syrian group, after arriving in Azerbaijan they face the fighting as it was in Syria and Libya. “We learned that it is war, and not work for a security company,” the Syrian fighter told CNN. He added that about 1000 fighters have already been sent to Azerbaijan.
Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote that the main reason why Syrian mercenaries are fighting for Turkey’s geostrategic reasons in different regions of the world is the extreme poverty and catastrophic situation of young men and their families in the countries of origin.
Video of a Syrian mercenary in Azerbaijan speaking about the heavy shelling carried out by Armenian forces. I reached his cousin. The fighter is Mustafa Qanti, 23-years-old. He was recruited to go to Libya by the Hamza Division, a Turkish-backed faction. pic.twitter.com/tHdzljm02X
