Turkish PM cancels visit to Qatar due to health issue

The Turkish government announced Wednesday that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had cancelled a trip to Qatar slated for this week to recover from an operation, while Qatar's Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani paid him a visit in Istanbul the same day.The meeting between Erdogan and Al Thani took place at the prime minister's residence in Istanbul and lasted around an hour and a half.Erdogan, 57, received an abdominal surgery on Nov. 26 and has been out of the public eye since then. Initially, he had been scheduled to visit Qatar on Dec. 10 to 12.The prime minister's office said on Wednesday that Erdogan is in good health and released photos of him with the visiting Qatari ruler.Earlier, the Qatari emir attended an innovation conference in Istanbul and said Qatar is willing to launch cooperation with Turkey's universities and scientific institutes."We have made investments in innovation worth 350 million U.S. dollars with several countries in the past four to five years. We are allocating 2.8 percent of our national income for innovation," the emir said at the conference.