What can Turkey expect from Qatari-Gulf deal?
Turkey feels vindicated as al-Ula Declaration ends the blockade against Qatar.
The Kuwaiti emir’s proposal to end the more than three-year-old Qatar blockade was accepted just as the Gulf Cooperation Council summit started on Jan. 5 in the historic city of al-Ula, Saudi Arabia. All four states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt — that endorsed the blockade against Qatar gave up on their 13 original conditions. Doha has fully recovered its position and has managed to diversify its security and trading partners.
“We may never know the exact feelings of [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan while watching [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed] bin Salman hug Erdogan’s good friend [Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad] Al Thani, but it was not a surprise. Ankara was expecting and preparing for this. We welcome al Ula Declaration as the good first step for Abu Dhabi to acknowledge its mistakes,” a senior Justice and Development Party (AKP) bureaucrat working for the Ministry of Defense told Al-Monitor.
Indeed, on Jan. 4, even before the UAE and Saudi Arabia opened their airports, land and seaports to Qatar, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement welcoming the decision and hoping for a permanent and extensive resolution to the conflict between the parties.
In December 2019, I wrote about Ankara’s concerns on Saudi-Qatari reconciliation. After the al-Ula Declaration, although some still debate if the end of the blockade will harm the Turkish-Qatari friendship, this is not a likely outcome in the near future. Ankara is aware that the codependency generated by the blockade will ease, but it aims to turn this shifting balance to its own advantage. The Al-Ula statement is expected to contribute to the thawing of relations between Ankara and Riyadh.
