Home Middle East Turkey Signed $5bn Deal with UAE

Turkey Signed $5bn Deal with UAE

On 19th January 2022, Turkey signed a $5 billion deal with UAE, boosting the foreign reserves. To increase its reserves Turkey has already signed such a deal with Qatar, South Korea and China, to prop up its reserves, which shrank more than 10% in December as the central bank intervened in the foreign-exchange market to stem the lira’s decline. According to the official statement, the swap agreement in local currencies is about 18 billion UAE dirhams or 64 billion Turkish liras. The deal is for about three years. According to the official data, on January 7th 2022 the reserve was totalled just under $110 billion but has been falling low. 

Turkey and UAE have had shared extensive cultural, military and economic ties, but relations in recent years have been crumbled. The dealing has been the two countries have been strained especially over the uprising of the 2011 Arab Spring as well as Libya’s conflict when both of the countries stood on the opposite side. Later, in 2016 Turkey accused UAE be the part of financing a failed coup and also being involved in sowing chaos with its involvement in the situation in Yemen in the region. On the other hand, Abu Dhabi has criticized Turkey’s involvement in the military operation in the region and for the instability too. During the 2017-2018 Qatar diplomatic crisis, the UAE has been critical of Turkey taking the side of Qatar. In 2019, the United Arab Emirates begin the formal process to recognize the Armenian genocide which was also a major setback for their relationship. Emirate of Abu Dhabi had become the first emirate to recognize the genocide in April 2019. Since the last year, Turkey has been trying to repair its ties with Egypt and Saudi Arabia whereas Abhu Dhabi has also pushed towards positivity and refocused on the economy and regional stability. The signing of the above agreement shows the repairing ties between the two countries.