Erdogan Demands Khashoggi Answers Ahead of Murder Anniversary
The president has often referred to the case in remarks to the international media as well as at the UNGA over the last two weeks.
(Bloomberg) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it’s now up to the global community to shed light on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, ramping up pressure on Saudi Arabia ahead of the first anniversary of the murder.
In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, which published Khashoggi’s columns until his death almost a year ago, Erdogan said key details of the plot to silence a critic of the kingdom’s rulers remain unexplained.
“That, one year on, the international community still knows very little about what happened is a serious source of concern,” he wrote. “Whether all aspects of the Saudi journalist’s death will ever come to light will determine what kind of world our children will live in.”
Erdogan has persistently demanded Saudi authorities fully explain Khashoggi’s murder since he entered the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 last year and never walked out.
Over the past two weeks, the president has often referred to the case in remarks to the international media as well as at the United Nations General Assembly. That’s an attempt to prevent it being pushed aside as of concern only to Turkey, whose foreign policy in the Middle East often clashes with that of Saudi rulers.
Turkey wants “to uphold the rules-based international system,” Erdogan wrote. “Hence our refusal to let the Khashoggi murder be portrayed as a bilateral dispute between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkey has always seen, and continues to see, the kingdom as its friend and ally.”
The murder poisoned bilateral ties. While saying he was convinced King Salman knew nothing of the plot, and refraining from publicly attacking powerful Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, Erdogan has been unsparing in his condemnation of the killing and vowed to take the case to international courts.
“The 15-member assassination squad that murdered Khashoggi inside Saudi Arabia’s Consulate in Istanbul and chopped his body into pieces served the interests of a shadow state within the kingdom’s government -- not the Saudi state or people,” he said in the opinion piece.
While the kingdom has said 11 Saudi citizens are being tried for the killing of Khashoggi, it’s never explained what happened to the late columnist’s body while vehemently denying the crown prince ordered or knew of the murder in advance.
“I get all the responsibility because it happened under my watch,” the prince was cited as saying in December 2018 by a recent PBS Frontline documentary. He blamed unnamed officials for acting without his knowledge.
To contact the reporters on this story: Onur Ant in Istanbul at oant@bloomberg.net;Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine at asalha@bloomberg.net, ;Michael Gunn at mgunn14@bloomberg.net, Mark Williams, Karl Maier
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