At the following article from Stratfor, titled

“Turkey: Qatar Breaks With Arab League, Backs Air

Campaign”, August 2015, you can read that the Arab

League condemned the Turkish air strikes against

the PKK in North Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan), but Qatar

expressed its full support for Turkey.

Picture 1

That makes sense, given that from the Arab

countries, Qatar is Turkey’s closest ally. Qatar is

a very small country but it is the richest country

in the world in terms of per capita GDP

(GDP/population). Qatar has plenty of liquidity to

finance socialists in the European parliaments and

Jihadists in the battlefields, but in absolute

terms Qatar cannot compete in military terms with

Saudi Arabia and Iran, because they are much bigger

countries in absolute terms. Qatar shares with Iran

the largest natural gas field in the world i.e. the

South Pars/North Field, but at the same time it is

surrounded geographically by Saudi Arabia, which is

the only country that connects Qatar with the rest

of the world by land.

Picture 2

Therefore Qatar wants to have a balanced stance

towards the two big rivals i.e. Saudi Arabia and

Iran. But this is very difficult, and the two

countries put pressure on Qatar to support their

own foreign policy. In Libya and Egypt, Qatar

fights on the side of Iran, and the same is true in

Gaza, but in Iraq and Syria, Qatar fights on the

side of Saudi Arabia, actually on Turkey’s side,

but that’s against Iran, and in the Yemen war Qatar

fights on the side of Saudi Arabia, since Turkey is

not really present in Yemen. Qatar needs Turkey’s

strong military presence as a shield against Saudi

Arabia and Iran, and recently Turkish soldiers went

to Qatar, 100 years after the withdrawal of the

Turkish army from the Middle East, during the First

World War. Therefore Qatar has accepted Tayip

Erdogan as the Sultan of the Muslim World,

something which is very difficult for the Saudis to

do. Therefore the relations between the Saudis and

the Turks are very problematic, and the Saudis are

the main influence in the Arab League.

Picture 3

See also Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia

https://iakal.wordpress.com/2015/07/12/iran-turkey-

and-saudi-arabia/

For the Stratfor article see

“Turkey: Qatar Breaks With Arab League, Backs Air

Campaign”

https://www.stratfor.com/situation-report/turkey-

qatar-breaks-arab-league-backs-air-campaign?

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