A purported diplomatic document claimed that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked Qatar to send 150 special forces personnel to protect him after the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.
Middle East Monitor reported on February 2 that the document was attributed to Qatar’s embassy in Ankara and bore the name of Ambassador Salem bin Mubarak Al-Shafi.
According to the document, Erdoğan contacted the embassy on July 16, 2016, requesting Qatari personnel to protect him against possible assassination attempts. It claimed that Doha responded by flying 150 members of its special forces to a military airport in Ankara aboard private aircraft.
The purported document further claimed that the Qatari personnel helped guard Erdoğan before quietly leaving Ankara on July 19, after the immediate threat had subsided.
Middle East Monitor also asserted that the Qatari Embassy had confirmed the deployment, quoting an unspecified statement that the troops had played an important role in protecting Erdoğan and that the cooperation would strengthen relations between the two countries. The report did not identify the embassy official who allegedly provided that confirmation or explain how the document had been authenticated.
On the same day the report appeared, a senior official from Qatar’s Foreign Ministry issued an unequivocal denial through the Qatar News Agency. The official called both the alleged deployment and the purported embassy document “baseless and completely untrue.”
