Turkey wants answers in columnist’s slaying

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made his strongest personal challenge yet to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia over the killing of the dissident Jamal Khashoggi, saying he was still waiting for answers and expressing frustration with the Saudi response in comments published Tuesday in progovernment newspapers.

Speaking to Turkish reporters while traveling back from Paris, where he met with leaders from France, Germany and the United States, Erdogan said the crown price was failing to follow through on his promise to expose the truth about the disappearance and death of Khashoggi.

“The crown prince says, ‘I am going to clarify the incident and do what is necessary,’ ” Erdogan said in the published remarks. “The crown prince tells this to my special representatives, and we are waiting patiently.”

Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2; Turkish officials have said that he was murdered by a Saudi hit squad and his body destroyed. After several early denials, the Saudi authorities eventually admitted that Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate but have not revealed what was done with his body.

“It is obvious that this murder was previously planned and that the order had come from high-level authorities in Saudi Arabia,” Erdogan said, according to Posta, one of the most popular daily newspapers in Turkey. “We want the person who gave the order to be revealed.”

From the start, it has been widely believed that an operation against a high-profile dissident such as Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, could have been conducted only with the knowledge and approval of the crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader.

Erdogan has vowed to expose the people who ordered the killing of Khashoggi — a personal friend of Erdogan and many of his advisers — as well as those who carried it out.

After Khashoggi was assassinated, a member of the 15person team sent to Turkey to kill him told a superior by telephone to “tell your boss,” believed to be Mohammed, that the mission had been carried out, according to people familiar with a recording of the killing.