Relations between Qatar and Turkey range from the personal friendship of the country's leaders to deep economic ties.

Qatari capital is now a shareholder in Borsa Istanbul and has taken over the operating rights of the Tank Pallet Factory. Qatar has also stepped in when the Turkish economy was going through hard times and had difficulties in finding foreign financing, becoming the source of foreign currency flowing into the country.

So when did the strategic cooperation between Turkey and Qatar begin, how and under what conditions did it come to this day?

Qatar's investments in Turkey started in the 1990s
Qatar, which discovered oil and then natural gas offshore since 1939, now has the world's third largest known natural gas reserves. Qatargas is the world's largest liquefied natural gas company. With high revenues from this resource, Qatar accelerated its expansion into the international market in the 1990s.

Turkey was one of the countries it invested in.

The then Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, made his first visit to Turkey in December 2001, before the AKP era.

The first visit from Turkey to Qatar in the new era was made by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then Prime Minister, in 2005.

As the number of visits increased, Qatar's investments in Turkey accelerated, almost all of them in private companies.

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), the volume of foreign trade between the two countries was 26.23 million dollars in 2002.

In 2005, this amount increased rapidly to over 132 million dollars. In 2011, it was $669 million.

The two countries' medium-term target for foreign trade volume, which rose to 1.4 billion dollars in 2019, is 5 billion dollars.

According to data from the Ministry of Trade, Qatar's share in Turkey's total exports in 2019 was 0.7% and it ranked 34th among the countries with the highest exports.

In the same year, Turkey ranked 15th among Qatar's export destinations.

While Turkey's share in Qatar's imports was 4.1 percent, this share was 1.2 percent in exports. Turkey ranked 7th among the countries importing to Qatar.