Sunday, November 29, 2020

France Tells Turkey To Remove ‘Mercenaries’ From Karabakh
November 29, 2020
        • Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia -- French Secretary of State Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (L) and 
French-Armenian footballer Youri Djorkaeff at a meeting with Armenian Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian, Yerevan, November 28, 2020.

France expects Turkey to withdraw Syrian mercenaries recruited for Azerbaijan 
during the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a senior French official visiting 
Armenia said late on Saturday.

“French President Emmanuel Macron was the first to call things what they are and 
state that Turkey transported Syrian mercenaries from the Turkish city of 
Gaziantep to Nagorno-Karabakh,” Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, a secretary of state at 
the French Foreign Ministry, told a news conference in Yerevan held at the end 
of his two-day visit.

“France expects concrete actions from Turkey so that Turkey removes the 
mercenaries from the region,” he said. “Paris is going to discuss with its 
European partners sanctions against Turkey.”

France has been pressing the European Union to impose the sanctions because of 
Turkish actions in the eastern Mediterranean where Turkey and EU members Greece 
and Cyprus are locked in a dispute over natural gas rights. Relations between 
Ankara and Paris have been increasingly tense in recent months.

Macron accused Turkey of recruiting jihadist fighters from Syria for the 
Azerbaijani army shortly after the outbreak of large-scale hostilities in and 
around Karabakh on September 27.

Russia also expressed serious concern in the following weeks about the 
deployment of “terrorists and mercenaries” from Syria and Libya in the Karabakh 
conflict zone. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his foreign and defense 
ministers repeatedly raised the matter with their Turkish counterparts.

Ankara has denied sending members of Turkish-backed groups to fight in Karabakh 
on Azerbaijan’s side. Azerbaijan also denies the presence of such mercenaries in 
the Azerbaijani army ranks.

Multiple reports by Western media quoted members of Islamist rebel groups in 
areas of northern Syria under Turkish control as saying in late September and 
October that they are deploying to Azerbaijan in coordination with the Turkish 
government. Armenia has portrayed those reports as further proof of Turkey’s 
direct involvement in the war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire on 
November 10.

Karabakh’s Armenian-backed army claimed to have captured two Syrian fighters 
during the fighting. Both men are now prosecuted in Armenia on relevant charges.

Lemoyne discussed the issue at a meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Ara 
Ayvazian held earlier on Saturday. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, 
they stressed “the importance of removing foreign armed terrorists brought to 
the region by Turkey.”


Armenia - A French delegation headed by Secretary of State Jean-Baptiste 
Lemoyne, delivers medical supplies to a hospital in Yerevan, November 28, 2020.

Lemoyne arrived in Yerevan with a delegation of French officials, aid workers 
and French-Armenian community activists on a board a plane that brought a second 
batch of French humanitarian assistance to Armenian victims of the Karabakh 
conflict. It mainly consisted of medical supplies for Armenian soldiers and 
civilians wounded during the war. The delegation headed by Lemoyne visited two 
Yerevan hospitals treating them.

Lemoyne said the French government plans to send more such aid to Armenia when 
he met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Saturday.

“We are grateful to friendly France for providing humanitarian assistance and 
correctly presenting the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh to the international 
community,” Pashinian told the French official.

France is home to a sizable and influential ethnic Armenian community. It was 
instrumental in the passage by France’s Senate on November 18 of a resolution 
calling on the French government to recognize Karabakh as an independent 
republic.

Lemoyne expressed the Macron administration’s opposition to the resolution when 
he addressed the Senate during a debate. The French Foreign Ministry reiterated 
on November 19 that “France does not recognize the self-proclaimed 
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.”


Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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