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Armenian soldier fires at positions in Azerbaijan: Fierce fighting, hundreds dead
Photo: ARMENIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE / via REUTERS
His voice sounds brittle, almost panicked.
He was crouching in an air raid shelter right at the front in Nagorno-Karabakh, says Ibrahim, a Syrian, 24 years old, on the phone.
The Armenian fighter jets would pass over him.
"We're getting hit hard. We've lost so many men that I can't count them anymore. I just hope I get out of here."
Until recently, Ibrahim, who did not want his full name published for fear of repression, was still fighting for the Sultan Murad Brigade, a sub-group of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), against Syria's dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Now, however, he is serving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the last remaining ally of the FSA, on a completely different front: in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.
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Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan under international law.
In fact, however, the region is controlled by Armenians.
In the past few years there had been repeated skirmishes between the two neighbors.
But never since the 1994 armistice have the fighting been as intense as it is now.
Several hundred people died in the clashes within a week.
A major attack in Azerbaijan only started on Saturday.
And now the conflict threatens to develop into an international proxy war.
Russia supports Armenia, albeit half-heartedly, as the Kremlin is also selling weapons to Azerbaijan.
Turkey, on the other hand, has clearly sided with the government in Baku.
As in Syria and Libya, Turkey and Russia are on different sides of the front in the Caucasus.
"I condemned Armenia's attack on Azerbaijani territory," President Erdogan recently said publicly.
"Turkey stands by Azerbaijan’s side with all its resources."
Turkey sends at least 1,000 Syrian mercenaries
The Turkish government claims that it has not yet actively intervened in the conflict in the Caucasus.
Research by SPIEGEL now suggests, however, that Turkey has at least 1,000 Syrian mercenaries and drones in the region.
Several Syrians independently stated that they were fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh on behalf of Ankara.
They actually locate geodata in the region.
Erdogan had already managed to turn the war in Libya in favor of his allies in early summer by deploying several thousand Syrian mercenaries.
The Turkish head of state has become the secret ruler of the North African country without having to deploy his own troops on a large scale.
Now he seems to want to repeat this strategy in the Caucasus.
Hamid, a commander in the Hamza Brigade, another sub-group of the FSA, says he has sent a dozen of his men to Nagorno-Karabakh since late September.
Some of the fighters are recruited in the refugee camps in northern Syria.
They will be brought across the border to the Turkish city of Gaziantep and from there by plane via Ankara and Istanbul to Azerbaijan.
Meanwhile a new convoy would start every day.
Ibrahim, a member of the Sultan Murad Brigade, told SPIEGEL that many of his comrades had refused to go to the war for Nagorno-Karabakh alongside Azerbaijan.
For them, Libya was a warning example, where many more fighters died than the Turkish government had predicted.
Ibrahim himself accepted because he has to support the family.
His wife and three children live in a refugee camp on the Syrian-Turkish border.
They depend on the money, he says.
And Turkey offers each fighter around $ 1,000 a month for deployment in the Caucasus.
Ibrahim is now fighting on the front lines in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijani soldiers are positioned further back.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO, at least 60 Syrians were killed in the fighting.
Despite the money: Ibrahim regrets accepting the job.
"I don't know what I'm doing here," he says.
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