Erdogan challenges Saudis on journalist
Turkish police are demanding to search the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul where they believe a leading journalist was kidnapped and murdered last week.
Waleed Elkhereiji, the Saudi ambassador, was summoned to the foreign ministry in Ankara on Monday for the second time since Jamal Khashoggi went missing a week ago, with relations between the two western allies growing increasingly strained over the row.
Sedat Onal, Turkey’s deputy foreign minister, is said to have demanded ‘‘full co-operation’’ in the police investigation into what happened to Khashoggi, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Saudi officials to prove their innocence. ‘‘Consulate officials cannot save themselves by saying that he left the building,’’ he told a news conference. ‘‘If he left, you have to prove it with footage.’’
Turkish officials believe that Khashoggi was murdered when he visited the consulate last Wednesday, with the body possibly dismembered and removed in cases by a 15-strong squad said to have arrived from Saudi Arabia the same day.
Friends said Khashoggi, a former media adviser to the Saudi embassy in London who had grown critical of the policies of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, did not fear for his safety. However, colleagues and supporters who gathered outside the Istanbul consulate yesterday to protest over his disappearance said he had told his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, to wait for him and ‘‘call for help if he did not reemerge’’.
There have been reports that he had sought assurances that he would not be harmed when he went to the consulate to obtain papers relating to his impending divorce, but also that he was negotiating with the crown prince to return to the kingdom. He has lived in self-imposed exile in Washington for the past year.
A former editor of Saudi newspapers, he was close to Prince Turki bin Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to both London and Washington.
Saudi Arabia has issued a brief statement dismissing as ‘‘baseless’’ the claims that it had killed Khashoggi and insisting that he left the consulate after finishing his paperwork. It had been unable to release CCTV footage of his departure because the cameras were not recording.
In Washington, Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator, told the Senate foreign relations committee there would be ‘‘a very heavy price to be paid economically and otherwise’’ by Saudi Arabia if the claims were proven.
‘‘It would be devastating to the US-Saudi relationship,’’ he added. – The Times