Scrambling to draw foreign investors to ease Turkey’s hard currency crunch, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has once again turned to its closest ally, Qatar. The two sides announced a raft of agreements last week, including fresh Qatari acquisitions, with Ankara eager to convey a semblance of renewed foreign capital flows to its crisis-hit economy. Government opponents, who charge that Ankara’s economic bonds with the Gulf monarchy are politically motivated and lack transparency, however, meet Qatar’s investments with suspicion.

The latest deals, announced during Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani’s Nov. 26 visit to Ankara, include Qatar's purchases of a stake in Istinye Park, one of Turkey’s largest shopping malls, and a 10% share in the Istanbul stock exchange. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development had previously bought the 10% Borsa Istanbul AS stake, but divested it last year, irked by Ankara’s appointment of Hakan Atilla — a Turkish banker who served jail time in the United States for helping Iran evade US sanctions — as the CEO of Borsa Istanbul.

Turkey’s trade volume with tiny Qatar is no more than $1.5 billion, but Erdogan’s government has been keen to draw chunks from the wealthy emirate’s capital surplus to Turkey. The new agreements, which followed some controversial deals in previous years, triggered political wrangling at home, as opposition parties blasted Ankara for mismanaging the economy and then “selling off everything to Qatar.” Is it so? What is the actual scale of Qatari investments in Turkey?

Although Qatar’s territory and population amount to only 1.5% and 3.5% of those of Turkey, respectively, the emirate boasts more than $80,000 in gross domestic product per capita, compared to only about $9,000 in Turkey. Typically, Turkey posts a current account deficit of $25 billion to $30 billion a year, while gas- and oil-rich Qatar enjoys a current account surplus of up to $25 billion, which allows it to invest copiously abroad, mainly through the Qatar Investment Authority.