Ex-mercenary: Turkey sent child fighters to Azerbaijan

Ex-mercenary: Turkey sent child fighters to Azerbaijan

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey sent child fighters to Azerbaijan when it recruited Syrian mercenaries to fight against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in fall 2020, pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency reported on Tuesday, April 6, citing a former mercenary.

In the war against Artsakh (Karabakh), Turkey supported Azerbaijan militarily, also by transferring terrorist mercenaries from the Middle East to fight against Karabakh. Armenia was the first to report on Turkey's deployment of thousands of Syrian fighters to Azerbaijan. International media publications followed suit, as did reactions from France, Russia, Iran and Syria. The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army has already unveiled footage from the interrogation of two such terrorists captured on the front.

Ex-mercenary, who goes by the name Fajr Maaliki, told the agency that he was 13-years-old when he first joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the Turkey-backed umbrella organization of rebel groups now known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), Ahval says.

“As Turkey started recruiting more men to fill these Syrian National Army (SNA) factions for their Afrin operation, they also began recruiting more children, too,” Maaliki said. “And that continues to this day. There are so many children among the SNA factions now. "

“It should be clear that when Turkey sent SNA to Azerbaijan [to support Azerbaijani forces in their attack on Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2020], there were children among them, as well”, Maaliki said.

“The Syrian National Army are just mercenaries for Turkey. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has sent us to Libya, to Azerbaijan. The young generation, those who were babies when the war started, are illiterate, uneducated, and naive. I think they will remain slaves to Turkey”, Maaliki said.

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