Turkey’s U-turn on Saudi relations

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler took a big step onto the world stage by paying his first visit to Sunni rival Turkey since the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.

The talks in Ankara between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan come one month before US President Joe Biden visits Riyadh for a regional summit.

Those talks will focus on the energy crunch caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Erdogan’s decision to revive ties with one of his biggest rivals is driven in large part by economics and trade.

Turks’ living standards are imploding a year before a general election that poses one of the biggest challenges of Mr Erdogan’s two-decade rule. It was his Islamic-rooted government that released gruesome details of the Khashoggi murder suggesting that his body had been dismembered

and dissolved in acid. But it is now drumming up investment and central bank assistance from the very countries it opposed on ideological grounds.

“I think this is probably one of the most significant visits to Ankara by a foreign leader in almost a decade,” said The Washington Institute’s Turkey specialist Soner Cagaptay.

“Erdogan is all about Erdogan. He’s all about winning elections and I think he has decided to swallow his pride.”

The Turkish leader welcomed the prince (pictured) at his presidential palace with a grand ceremony featuring a military honour guard.

They then held a two-hour meeting and a private dinner but no media event. A joint statement said the meeting was held “in an atmosphere of sincerity and brotherhood”.

Turkey’s rapprochement with the Saudis began with an Istanbul court decision in April to break off the trial in absentia of 26 suspects accused of links to Khashoggi’s killing and to transfer the case to Riyadh.

US intelligence officials have determined that Prince Mohammed approved the plot.