This week, multiple sources confirmed that Turkey has sent hundreds of Syrian mercenaries to fight alongside Azerbaijani forces against Armenia in the latest escalation in a newly aggressive pattern of Turkish foreign policy.
Erdogan’s Turkey has made no secret of its nationalist and expansionist goals. The country now has some form of military presence in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan, in addition its provocations of Greece over territorial claims in the Eastern Mediterranean and support of Azerbaijan.
What is less discussed is the fact that Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) militias are now involved in three of those seven conflicts— a development with serious implications for the role that Turkey and the Syrian opposition alike can play in Syria’s future.
In northern Syria, the SNA are waging war on Kurdish, Yezidi, and Christian civilians so that Turkey can have favorable demographics on its border. In Libya, they are supporting the party to that country’s civil war that has offered Turkey the most favorable access to resources in the Mediterranean. In Azerbaijan, where their presence has only recently been confirmed, they are fighting for Turkish nationalist grievances against survivors of an Ottoman-era genocide that modern Turkey still denies.
None of these conflicts involve the Syrian government, which the SNA was ostensibly established to fight. None of them serve the broad interests of the Syrian people— or of any civilian population involved.
In Afrin, Sere Kaniye, and Tel Abyad, SNA fighters have expelled civilians from their homes, stolen their property, destroyed historic sites, persecuted minorities, and assaulted women, according to the United Nations.
Similar claims are now coming from Libya. “USAFRICOM reported that there were increasing reports of theft, sexual assault, and misconduct by Syrian fighters, which is likely to compound an already dangerous security environment in Libya and result in backlash from the Libyan public,” warned an August report from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Turkey appears to encourage this behavior. SNA groups are armed, paid, trained, and transported to conflict zones by Turkey, which gives Turkish authorities significant leverage to stop these violations if they wished to. Instead, they promote and export the factions with the worst human rights records: among the groups reportedly sent to Azerbaijan are the Sultan Murad Division, whose members have been implicated in several reports of forced marriages, and the Hamza Division, which is known for kidnapping Kurdish civilians.
This pattern has implications for the entire Syrian opposition political project. It cannot be argued that SNA groups are unrepresentative of opposition policy. The SNA was founded as the official armed wing of the Syrian Interim Government, which is affiliated with the opposition coalition represented in UN constitutional negotiations.
In fact, the governance of opposition-held areas— particularly those captured from the SDF— suggests that the SNA holds more power than its affiliated civilian structures do. This means that their actions are, if anything, more representative of the opposition on the ground than the statements of civilian bodies.
If large numbers of young men in these regions have resorted to terrorizing civilians and fighting on behalf of a foreign power out of apolitical economic desperation, as their defenders often argue, then the opposition has failed.
A political entity wherein individuals must become criminals and mercenaries in order to earn a living is not a credible alternative to any government. Turkey has contributed to this failure by using the most violent groups for its own ends and giving them the opportunity to become mercenaries in the first place.
On the other hand, if rampant aggression against certain ethnic and religious groups and subservience to foreign interests are political choices made by the opposition, then their project is an active threat to prospects for peace and democracy in Syria.
To rebuild after years of war, the country will need leaders who will defend the rights of all its diverse peoples—not those who abandon their cause to fight a foreign dictator’s imagined enemies. Once again, Turkey has played a detrimental role by encouraging sectarian and ethnic chauvinist sentiments that align with its own nationalist goals.
Violent, disorganized proxy forces of an expansionist dictatorship should have no place in the future of Syria or the broader region. The presence of SNA fighters in Azerbaijan shows once again that all Turkish intervention in Syria has done for Turkey’s “allies” is ensure that those allies are useful for Erdogan’s geopolitical ambitions— at the expense of prospects for stability, security, and coexistence.