Turkey’s Relationship with Qatar, a view from the ground
Author: Kamil Vohidov, Northwestern University
March 2014,
Doha witnessed the unprecedented withdrawal of diplomats representing major Gulf monarchies including Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain. Eight months later, the ambassadors were back as Doha promised to address the bloc’s indignation at its support of some of Islamist groups in the region including the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not considered a “terrorist” organization by the UK and the United States.
Tensions between Qatar and its geographical neighbours had been building up since 2014. In 2015, the Daily Mail reported the UAE government signed a deal with a UK-based consultancy firm to promote its foreign policy objectives and to brief British journalists about Qatar resulting in the campaign accusing Qatar in funding “terrorism”.
A year later, the King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud visited Doha to negotiate and strengthen ties between the two countries.
In May 2017, the official website of Qatar News Agency was hacked following the comments falsely attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. The statements expressed the leader’s support for Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel, which the government of Qatar categorically denied, although the discredited remarks kept running on UAE-based sky news and Al Arabiya.
Tensions reached an extremum on June 5th. The peak of tensions saw the radical imposition of an air, land and sea blockade, the complete cutting of diplomatic ties and the commencement of an economic embargo on trade that Qatar’s economy significantly relied on.
Military actions were also considered against Qatar. “Qatar’s former deputy minister [Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah] accused the United Arab Emirates of plotting to invade Doha with an army of mercenaries,” Middle East Eye reported. UAE hired a “Blackwater-linked” security company to provide training of thousands of [Columbian and South African] mercenaries to overthrow the emir and replace with a ruler, adjacent to Saudi-led regional politics, al-Attiyah stated. However, Trump warned Saudi and Emirati leaders to back off, as a prolonged dispute in the region will serve as an advantage to Iran, Bloomberg reported.
Turkey’s response to the eruption of the crisis was timely and pointed. Immediately, orders were given to supply food to reduce the impact of the instant embargo, and a law was introduced authorizing Ankara to deploy Turkish troops and train Qatari forces – a policy that aligned with a military agreement that Qatar and Turkey signed a year prior, in 2016.
The stakes of taking a pro-Qatari stance were high for Ankara. The anti-Qatar bloc “wasted no time to take a counter-step that infuriated Turkey. They held a meeting with the People Protection Units, or the YPG [A Kurdish military group present in Syria and considered as a terrorist entity by the Turkish state], just five days after the crisis erupted,” reported Dr. Birol Baskan, a research fellow at the Middle East Institute and former professor at Georgetown University in Qatar.
The bloc “showed interest in contributing to the military strength of Kurdish forces that Turkey has a long conflict history with,” he further added. Risking the interests of high-stake Saudi investments was, it would appear, also a part of Ankara’s moral and political calculus.
The bilateral relationship between Qatar and Turkey, nonetheless, remained strong throughout the diplomatic crisis, remaining so today. Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published 2018 data indicating that “180 Turkish construction operate in Qatar and the total volume of projects undertaken by Turkish companies has reached a level of $17.4b in total”.
Today Turkish companies are involved in the construction of Qatari metro branches and football stadiums in the advent of the upcoming 2020 World Cup. In 2019, nearly 90,000 Qatari tourists visited Turkey in contrast with 32,000 in 2016. Approximately 5000 troops are based in the Turkish military base in Qatar, Al Jazeera has reported.
Qatar is currently home to the largest American military base in the Middle East, hosting approximately 11,000 American troops, and 5,000 Turkish. A number is soon to be supplemented following the signing of the SOFA agreement between Qatar and France (December 2019).
Several of the demands posed by the blockading countries were to shut down Turkish military base, terminating Al Jazeera, paying reparations and handing over files detailing Qatar’s contact with the political opposition including their personal information.
However, four months since the initiation of the blockade, HH Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani explained why fulfilling the demands is not an option for Qatar- such demands threaten Qatar’s sovereignty, “which is a red line for us”.
Surrounded by the anti-Qatar block, Qatar is challenged even more, being a small state, which is why it is welcoming so many foreign troops. On the one hand, “the presence of the troops is more about deterrence than anything else,” Dr. Sami Hermez, an anthropology professor at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), explained. On the other hand, “to what extent is Qatar’s sovereignty [sic] governed by Qatar as there is a largest American base in the Middle East?” he asked simultaneously.
As much as Turkey wants to ensure the regional security, as much it wants to promote its regional interests in the Middle East. .
For example, the currency crisis in Turkey two years ago, backed by Qatar’s financial injection of $15bn, indicates how volatile Turkey’s economy is when it stands alone.
Turkey’s economy also significantly depends on energy imports, which Qatar happily supplies.
“Turkey’s military presence in Qatar enables it to become a major player in the global energy market and also to advance its own economy in various ways,” said Miriam Berg, professor at NU-Q, specializing in the analysis of Turkish media and Turkey’s foreign policy.
This fortunate diplomatic partnership has also become more substantiated by the recently launched ‘TurkStream’ energy supply chain, which is intended to deliver Russian natural gas via Turkey to Europe, ensuring Turkey’s energy security prominence in the Gulf.
“Turkey’s goal is to gain a military foothold in the Gulf, as part of its deployment in a range [sic] of regional Muslim countries, including Libya, Sudan and Somalia with the aim to regain the hegemony it enjoyed until the fall of the Ottoman Empire,” Dr. Berg added on.
Qatar and Turkey are strong political, economic and to a degree ideological allies. Both of the states express support to the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestine branch Hamas. Qatar’s Al Jazeera has significantly influenced the evolution of Arab Spring by covering the protests. Both Qatar and Turkey are supportive of protests in Syria, Libya and Egypt. Is it forward-thinking to expect a change of such diplomatic partnership?
“I do not see the possibility of an imminent threat to Qatar from Turkey’s side and vice versa. Both of those countries share similar views and have similar common goals, which are mutually beneficial,” explained Dr. Banu Akdenizli, professor at NU-Q, specializing in communication studies and international public diplomacy.
Regional security and the mutual advancement of economies, it would appear, is a convincing enough argument for the states to support each other both in good and bad times.