Around 1.5 million people are expected to attend the FIFA World Cup, according to organizers.
On Sunday, Qatari and Turkish representatives met in Doha to discuss security issues in advance of Qatar hosting the FIFA World Cup 2022 later this year.
The Qatari team was led by Major General Abdulaziz Abdullah Al Ansari, the chairman of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Security and Safety Operations Committee, while the Turkish mission was led by Deputy Interior Minister Muhterem Ince, according to Anadolu Agency.
The sessions touched on a variety of topics related to collaborative cooperation during the major competition, which will take place in November.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu announced in January that his country would send 3,250 security agents to Qatar for the athletic event. 3,000 riot police officers, 100 Turkish special forces, 50 bomb detecting dogs and their operators, 50 bomb experts, and other personnel will be deployed for the event, which will last 45 days.
According to Al Jazeera, Soylu also stated that Ankara had trained 677 Qatari security professionals in 38 different professional areas, without providing any details on the specifics.
The Qatari and Turkish interior ministries had earlier agreed to collaborate in the planning of the highly anticipated event. One such attempt is Turkey’s participation in the World Cup 2022 security organization.
Joint efforts between Qatar and Turkey
The annual Qatar-Turkey Supreme Strategic Committee meeting, co-chaired by the Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took held in Doha in December 2021.
Between the two countries, 15 new agreements were made in a variety of categories, including trade, investment, development, culture, youth, sports, security, and media.
Qatar News Agency (QNA) and Anadolu Agency (AA) of Turkey also signed an agreement to strengthen “professional collaboration links” and improve content quality.
Doha and Ankara have signed over 60 agreements in recent years, including one that places Turkish military at the Khalid ibn Al-Walid Base in Qatar. The base first opened its doors in December of this year.
By the end of 2018, the two countries’ trade volume had climbed by 57 percent over the previous year, reaching almost QAR 5 billion.
Qatar’s total investments in Turkey are expected to exceed $22 billion by 2020, with 533 Turkish businesses working in the Gulf kingdom on projects worth at least $18.5 billion. In turn, there are now 179 Qatari enterprises operating in Turkey.
Last year, the two countries’ bilateral trade volume totaled QAR 6.8 billion.
