Turkey, Qatar to convene Supreme Strategic Committee

Senior officials of Turkey and Qatar will hold a sixth meeting of the Turkey-Qatar Supreme Strategic Committee on Thursday in the Turkish resort city of Antalya.

The talks will be led by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his Qatari counterpart Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"During the meeting, opportunities for bilateral cooperation and the current state of affairs in various fields between Turkey and Qatar will be reviewed and an exchange of views on regional and international developments will be held," the ministry said.

The Supreme Strategic Committee was formed in 2014, a year before the deployment of Turkish troops to Qatar. Relations between Ankara and Doha have since grown ever closer, particularly after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt accused Qatar of supporting terrorism, cutting off diplomatic ties and imposing an economic blockade on the country in 2017.

Turkey sent additional troops to the Gulf state following the blockade. Qatar has pledged $15 billion in cross-currency swaps to the Turkish central bank to help shore up the lira, which has fallen to successive record lows since a currency crisis in 2018.

The two countries have also cooperated closely on regional foreign policy issues including the war in Syria, where they have backed armed groups battling the military of President Bashar Assad. In Libya, they have supported a United Nations-recognised government in Tripoli with weapons and military know-how in a conflict with opposition forces in the east of the country.