loading…
BBC Arabic spoke to a Syrian militia under the pseudonym “Abdullah”. He admitted that he was recruited by Turkey to guard military points on the Azerbaijan border for a fee of USD2,000.
Abdullah said he was flown to Azerbaijan via Istanbul along with several other Syrian men. They received no training, but were sent to Nagorno-Karabakh wearing Azerbaijani uniforms when the fighting broke out. (Read: Fierce War, Azerbaijan Destroys Armenia’s S-300 Missile System)
“The car stopped and we were surprised to find ourselves on the front lines,” Abdullah said. “Then the bombing started, people cried in fear and wanted to go home,” he said referring to the fate of the Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, which was reported on Thursday (1/10/2020).
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that about 320 Syrian mercenaries have been transported to Azerbaijan by Turkish security companies. But they added that Armenian-born militias in Syria had also been transported to Armenia to join the fighting.
However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s advisers; Ilnur Cervik; deny such reports. (Read: US Intelligence: Israel sends weapons to Azerbaijan during war with Armenia)
“We did not recruit anyone. Where is the evidence that we recruited these people along with the Syrian opposition who sent them Azerbaijanis? This is simply not true,” he said.
On Wednesday, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry published video footage of what it said was the destruction of two enemy tanks and said an Armenian battalion had fled the area around Tonashen.
– .
