President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will pay an official visit to Qatar upon the invitation of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on Tuesday. Additionally, the first meeting of the high-level Qatar-Turkish Supreme Strategic Committee, was established in December 2014, will also be held. According to the Qatari Daily Peninsula, Erdoğan will be accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising of the interior, national education, finance, environment and urban planning, defense, transport, maritime affairs and communication, culture and tourism and economy ministers, as well as a number of businesspeople. Consequently, it is predicted that important issues, such as energy, economic ties, bilateral relations and the ongoing crisis in the region, will be discussed, and various agreements, especially regarding economic issues, will be signed.
Additionally, the defense industry and oil and gas trade between countries are expected to become the main topic of conversations regarding bilateral trade. The High-Tech Port by the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen Association (MÜSİAD) Qatar Fair, which brings together leading institutions from the Turkish and Qatari defense industries, and the 19th International Business Forum are both being held annually at the Qatar National Fair and Exhibition Center. With Turkuvaz Media Group as the press sponsor, various recent, local projects including the ATAK helicopter, Altay tank, national warship (MİLGEM), Göktürk-2 satellite, Kirpi armored vehicle, national infantry rifles and drones have all been introduced at the fair. Speaking at a press conference organized at Çırağan Palace in Istanbul, the chairman of the permanent committee of the Qatari ministry of foreign affairs, Abdullah Fakhroo, stressed that they are expecting the commercial relations between Turkey and Qatar, which increased 50-fold within the last 10 years, to increase 200-fold within the next 50 years. To further support this statement, Turkey's exports to Qatar are said to be worth more than $342 million on a nine-month cumulative basis, whereas the total exports in 2014 were worth $259 million during the same period, according to data from the Turkish Exporters' Assembly (TİM). This corresponds to an annual increase of about 32 percent, bringing Qatar from 73rd to 62nd among the countries that buy the most Turkish exports. Furthermore, following the downing of a Russian military jet by the Turkish Armed Forces, the detainment of Turkish businesspeople in Russia and the prohibition of Turkish trucks from crossing the border, Moscow has started denying Turkish trade vessels access to Russian ports. Thus, there is also curiosity growing about whether or not the meeting between the two countries will result in any possible agreements in reaction to the recent Russian trade policies directed toward Turkey.
The Syrian crisis and developments in the region are also expected to be discussed during the meeting. Relations between Turkey and Qatar have deepened in the past few years, as the two countries found themselves on the same side regarding the Syrian crisis and the Egyptian coup. Turkey was one of the vociferous critics of the Egyptian coup, which ousted the democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, while Qatar was the sole Gulf state to raise its voice against the coup.
