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Armenia and Azerbaijan have exchanged accusations of using foreign fighters, mostly from Syria, in the battle for Nagorno-Karabakh.
Here is an overview:
Since the start of the fighting last Sunday, Armenia has accused Turkey of sending mercenaries from northern Syria to fight alongside the Azeris.
On Friday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told the French newspaper Le Figaro that Turkey had “transported thousands of mercenaries and terrorists” to Azerbaijan from northern Syria.
Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a phone call, expressed “serious concern” over alleged “involvement in military actions by militants of illegal armed groups in the Middle East,” the Kremlin said.
French President Emmanuel Macron also intervened and demanded that Turkey explain what it said was the arrival of jihadist fighters in Azerbaijan.
Clashes between separatists from Azerbaijan and Armenia leave at least 23 dead
“A red line has been crossed, which is unacceptable,” Macron said.
There has been no official comment from Turkey supporting Baku in the conflict, but Azerbaijan has denied the reports.
“There is another piece of disinformation against Azerbaijan,” Hikmet Hajiyev, a presidential assistant for foreign affairs, told a news conference.
“We reject it completely, Azerbaijan does not need foreign fighters because we have professional armed forces and we also have enough reserve forces.”
But the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that around 1,200 pro-Turkey Syrian fighters have been dispatched to Azerbaijan since last week, and at least 64 of them were killed in combat.
The relatives of three combatants confirmed to AFP that they had been killed, while social media users shared images of four combatants who died in clashes.
According to Macron, intelligence reports indicate that 300 fighters from “jihadist groups” from the Syrian city of Aleppo have passed through Gaziantep in Turkey en route to Azerbaijan.
“These fighters are known, tracked down and identified,” he said.
The Observatory says the Syrian fighters are members of mostly pro-Turkish armed groups active in the northern Afrin region that Ankara seized from the Kurds in 2018.
They mostly belong to the Turkmen ethnic minority living in Syria, said the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman.
They fight under the banners of three groups of the Syrian National Army backed by Turkey: the Brigades of Sultan Murad, Suleiman Shah and Liwa Al-Muntasser bi Allah.
But SNA spokesman Youssef Hammoud, in a statement sent to AFP, denied the participation of his forces in Azerbaijan.
Last month, UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said that armed groups in the Turkish-controlled area of northern Syria may have committed war crimes and other violations of international law.
Aymenn Jawad Tamimi, an academic and expert on armed groups in Syria, said the fighters deployed were a mixed bag.
“Those who are going to fight are the same kind of people who have been recruited to fight in Turkey’s intervention in Libya,” he said.
They are a “mix of rebel veterans and new recruits” and “some of these rebels previously received Western backing.”
Baku says Armenians from the diaspora have been deployed.
“Armenians from Syria and Lebanon are being sent to Armenia and are in the ranks of the Armenian armed forces fighting against Azerbaijan,” Hajiyev said.
The Observatory said hundreds of Armenians from Syria have joined the battle, but an Armenian official in northern Syria denied the report.
Lebanese Armenian MP Hagop Pakradounian, for his part, said: “The Armenian political parties have no intention of sending youth (to Karabakh), there is no such organized action.”
