Qatar comes to Turkey’s ‘rescue’ amid public outcry

Turkey and Qatar on Thursday signed investment deals worth millions of dollars, as part of the developing relationship between the two countries.

The external funding will help to alleviate Turkey’s currency crisis, which has seen the lira lose about 40 percent of its value this year due to depleted foreign reserves. But the bilateral ties have sparked a public outcry, with people criticizing the sale of strategic assets to the Gulf nation.

Turkey transferred 10 percent of shares in the Istanbul stock exchange to the Qatar Investment Authority, and the Turkish Wealth Fund’s stake in the stock exchange dropped to 80.6 percent as a result. Qatar, having already poured $15 billion into currency swap deals, has also bought the transfer of 42 percent of shares in one of Turkey’s biggest shopping malls,

Istinye Park on Qatar Street in Istanbul, for $1 billion. It has also pledged to invest in the Istanbul Golden Horn marina project. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, criticized the government for signing the deals with Qatar, saying that even the sale of the presidential palace to the Gulf country would come as no surprise. “Where does your love for Qatar come from? Everything is being sold,” he said during a TV program on Friday.

Critics see the Qatari investment money as an alarming trend for the Turkish economy, dubbing the agreements as the “best Black Friday deal.” According to Hakan Kara, an economics professor at Bilkent University in Ankara and former chief economist at the Central Bank of Turkey, concentrated funding from a single source mostly driven by personal relationships was at odds with the Turkish government’s previous emphasis on “the need to reduce the dependence on foreign capital.” “History shows that such reliance on personal ties may bring compromises in many other areas,” he told Arab News.

‘Where does your love for Qatar come from? Everything is being sold.’