In addition to the real battle of Afrin there’s a PR war with Turks and Kurds seeking to woo Azeris and Armenians

A Turkish shell, purportedly used in Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch, with “Karabakh is Turkish, Will Remain Turkish” and the hashtag associated with the operation written on it. Armenians and Azerbaijanis have been targeted by both sides in the conflict. (photo:https://twitter.com/TurkmeneliCephe/)

Turks and Kurds have been seeking the support of Azeris and Armenians respectively in their attempts to gain international support for their causes in the conflict in the Syrian region of Afrin, Emil Sanamyan wrote for EurasiaNet.

“Accounts associated with the Azerbaijani lobby in Turkey distributed photos, apparently taken in the war zone, showing messages written on shells like ‘Karabakh is Turkish, will remain Turkish’ with a hashtag for the Turkish official name for the Afrin operation, Olive Branch,” Sanamyan said.

“Göksel Gülbey, head of the Turkish Association that Struggles Against International Baseless Armenian Lies (or ASIMDER for short), said Kurdish forces were receiving help from Armenia – particularly from among its Kurdish Yezidi minority – though it didn’t furnish any evidence to that effect.”

One long-standing claim in Turkey has been that there are many Armenian-origin fighters in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – while another says the group was founded by Armenians who took on Kurdish identity.

The Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has been seeking to exploit anti-Turkish sentiment to gain support from their cause in Armenia.

“Last year, Kurdish fighters put on events and produced films dedicated to veteran leftist guerrilla Nubar Ozanyan, a Turkish-born ethnic Armenian who was killed fighting for YPG and against ISIS (Islamic State) in Raqqa in August 2017. Ozanyan’s obituaries highlighted the fact that Ozanyan, nicknamed General Mardakert, also fought in the Karabakh war in the early 1990s,” Sanamyan said.