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The BBC is not yet in a position to verify this information.
Sir Abdullah (name changed at his request) told the BBC that several hundred people between the ages of 17 and 30, 19th century men living in areas controlled by Turkish and anti-Bashar al-Assad forces in northern Syria were recruited with the message of the Turkish army and the Syrian National Army.
Last Wednesday, four days before the fighting started, they were flown to Azerbaijan and housed near the line of fighting with the Armenians.
“Last week, Saif, the commander of the Hamza division of the Syrian National Army, offered the two bakers to go to Azerbaijan to guard the border military posts for $ 2,000 a month,” Abdullah told the BBC in a messaging program. .
“I didn’t know I would have to go to war there,” the BBC said.
According to him, already on September 27. he and his colleagues were brought to the front, where they were shot and four Syrians were killed. At the base where they live, Abdullah saw dozens of peasant bodies and some 70 wounded.
A BBC interlocutor claims that the majority of those recruited in Azerbaijan are not soldiers fighting in battles with Bashar al-Assad’s army, but peaceful and untrained residents who have returned home after the first losses, but not they are released and are threatened with prison.
According to a BBC source, 250 of them were flown on military transport planes to Azerbaijan from the nearby large Turkish city of Gaziantep.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) is an armed opposition structure operating in Syria during the civil war and is made up of deserters from the Syrian armed forces and volunteers.
The SNA, Turkey and Azerbaijan have officially denied sending mercenaries to Karabakh, calling the reports Armenian propaganda.
“We have 130,000 troops and 10 million population.” We can quickly increase this number (of troops) to 300,000, “David Velijev, director of the Azerbaijani Center for Analysis of International Relations, told the BBC, arguing that Baku does not need Syrian help.
Furthermore, J. Velijev recalled that the Azerbaijani authorities had prosecuted their citizens who had gone to war in Syria and that many of those who had returned had been accused of terrorism.
“Why are foreign troops from Syria to Azerbaijan when it is trying to protect itself from those who went to fight in Syria and isolate society from them?” Added J. Velijevo.
Reports on Syrians in Karabakh Rise
Recently, several European publications have written about Syrian troops, possibly sent by Turkey to Azerbaijan.
All posts are based on the alleged hired soldiers themselves; there is no independent confirmation of this information yet.
French journalist Guillaume Perrier reports in the political and informational magazine L’Express as a Turkish source for the BBC, who said that the journalist’s interlocutor had recruited about 1,000 soldiers in northern Syria and had been in trouble since 18 September. . took them to Azerbaijan.
The British newspaper The Guardian interviewed three soldiers who they said had been recruited to go to Azerbaijan.
The two brothers, The Guardian, said the commander of a Turkish military unit in Afrine (a city in northern Syria controlled by Turkey) was still there on September 13. He promised them a job in a Turkish security company in Azerbaijan.
The brothers, who asked that their names not be revealed, were told that in Azerbaijan they would not be soldiers, but security facilities for oil and gas structures, some observation posts, and would earn $ 1,300 a month, ten times more than what. they receive for military service in Syria.
A third Guardian spokesperson said on September 22 he and 150 volunteers summoned him to Afrin and ordered him to prepare for Azerbaijan, but on the same day he reversed the order and ordered him to await further instructions.
The Syrian National Army and Azerbaijan deny this information.
“The composition and reserve of our armed forces are more than sufficient,” Hikmet Hajjev, an adviser to the president of Azerbaijan, told Reuters.
“Observers are wondering why the well-trained and armed Azerbaijani army needs the help of Syrian troops,” agrees The Guardian.
For their part, Azerbaijan and Turkey accuse Armenia of sending Kurdish troops from Syria to Nagorno-Karabakh. There are also no independent confirmations of this statement.
The Times spoke with Mohammad Mahmoud al-Surani, a soldier in the Syrian National Army of Idlib, who did not hide his name.
According to him, around 200 of his colleagues were involved in the war on the Azerbaijani side in Karabakh.
“The Turks were worth nothing, but they control the area. People live there half-starved, they have recruited young men and fathers from families desperately in need of money,” MM al Surani told the publication.
According to him, the volunteers were told that they would protect both the objects in the rear and in the front lines of the soldiers.
MM al Surani himself eventually refused to fly to Azerbaijan, because he decided not to fight for the Azerbaijanis because they were Shiites, and MM al Surani fought against the supporters of this Islamic branch in his native Syria.
Reuters interacted with two soldiers from different armed groups. They said they were recruited by the Turks through the Syrian National Army for the Karabakh war.
They both told the agency that they promised to pay them $ 1,500 a month, a large amount of money for themselves. According to both, they were promised that they would do something to the back, not a soldier.
The agency interacted with the two soldiers last week before the fighting in Karabakh began, when they said they planned to send them to Azerbaijan on September 25, and then contact was cut off with them.
The American expert on Syria Elizabeth Curkov on Twitter and in an interview with various publications told him that she was aware of several Syrians recruited to go to Karabakh.
According to her, there are no confirmations yet that they will actually be shipped to Azerbaijan. She writes that she can only confirm the fact that dozens of soldiers from the Turkish factions left Syria in the northwest in an unknown direction.
According to E. Curkov, most of them are members of the SNA.
Macron blames Turkey for crossing the red line
The fight between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh continues on Friday despite calls for a ceasefire, and French President Emmanuel Macron has warned Turkey about the alleged deployment of jihadists in the conflict zone.
According to Macron, the intelligence found that 300 fighters from “jihadist groups” in Syria went to Azerbaijan through Turkey. The French president said he had “crossed the red line, which is unacceptable” and asked Ankara to explain.
In the battles for the ethnic Armenian province of Nagorno-Karabakh, which seceded from Azerbaijan during a fierce war in the 1990s, Ankara supports its former ally Baku.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has raged for decades, and the new fighting that broke out on Sunday is the most intense in many years.
Almost 200 people, including more than 30 civilians, have died in recent fighting. It is feared that the fighting will escalate into a comprehensive multi-front war and involve the region’s powers in Turkey and Russia.
As fighting continued on Friday’s sixth day, the Nagorno-Karabakh separatist government’s Defense Ministry said 54 more of its soldiers had been killed.
The report says that after a “relatively quieter night” a fight is taking place across the front line.
The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has also reported that fighting continues. Both parties claim that the opponent suffered heavy losses.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have previously ruled out the possibility of talks.
Still, on Friday, Armenia said it was ready to work with international mediators to negotiate a ceasefire with Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said Yerevan was willing to work with France, Russia and the United States as intermediaries in the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to “restore a ceasefire regime.”
Russia, USA and France call for negotiations
Russia and western countries have pushed for a ceasefire and immediate talks, while Turkey has shown strong support for Baku and accused Armenia of occupying Azerbaijani lands.
Macron warned Ankara on Thursday at the European Union summit in Brussels. He called on “all NATO partners to acknowledge the existence of such behavior by a NATO member.”
In a joint statement on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump and Macron called on the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders to resume talks on a Nagorno-Karabakh agreement immediately and unconditionally.
Russia has also hinted that it is making progress on diplomatic efforts with Turkey. According to Moscow, she and Turkish Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Mevlut Cavusoglu have confirmed their willingness to “close coordination” to stabilize the situation.
Yerevan is part of the Moscow-led military alliance of the former Soviet republics and accuses Turkey of directly supporting Azerbaijan: deploying planes and sending mercenaries from northern Syria to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenia has confirmed the deaths of 158 of its soldiers and 13 civilians since Sunday. Azerbaijan did not report the deaths of any soldiers, but said 19 civilians were killed in the Armenian shooting.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s declared independence from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s sparked a war that claimed 30,000 lives. lives. However, the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh is not recognized by any state, not even by Armenia.
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh declared a state of war and military mobilization on Sunday, while Azerbaijan introduced the military regime and a curfew in major cities.
Negotiations to resolve the conflict have stalled since the 1994 ceasefire agreement.
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