Potential escalation in Saudi Arabia
Turkey intensified demands for extradition of 18 suspects in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey on Friday intensified its demands for Saudi Arabia to extradite 18 suspects in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a call that is likely to be met with resistance from the kingdom and could escalate tensions between the U.S.-allied regional powers.
Meanwhile, Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, gave an anguished and tearful TV interview in which she said she keeps asking herself if she had missed some signs and should have prevented him from entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 — questions that she says she cannot answer.
The Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office submitted a request for Saudi Arabia to hand over the suspects in the killing, and the Turkey’s Foreign Ministry will formally notify the kingdom, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported. The Saudi government has said it arrested and would itself punish 18 people for what it described as a rogue operation by officials who killed Khashoggi in the consulate.
Saudi Arabia has returned suspects to Turkey before. The stakes are much higher in the Khashoggi case, however, as some of those implicated are close to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s heir apparent whose condemnation of the killing failed to ease suspicions that he was involved.
Turkish prosecutors want the suspects to face prosecution for “premeditated killing executed with fiendish sentiments or by causing torment,” according to the Anadolu agency.
Turkey alleges a 15member hit squad was sent to Istanbul to kill the journalist, a onetime Saudi insider who became a critic of Prince Mohammed and was a columnist for The Washington Post. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said three others in the group of 18 were consulate staffers.
Erdogan said Friday that Turkey would reveal more evidence about the killing but was not in any rush to do so, indicating that Turkish authorities will methodically increase pressure on Saudi Arabia even as the kingdom floats conflicting statements in a vain and often clumsy attempt to end the crisis.
“There is no point in being too hasty,” Erdogan said in an address to ruling party leaders. He added that the Saudis who killed Khashoggi must reveal the location of his body.
Hours after Erdogan’s speech, Cengiz told HaberTurk, a Turkish news channel, about her pain since he disappeared after entering the consulate.
“I found myself in a darkness I cannot express,” Cengiz said. She described how she had accompanied Khashoggi, 59, to the consulate and waited outside while, she thought, he was getting paperwork for their planned marriage. He never came out.
Cengiz said she has not received any condolence call from Saudi officials after the death of Khashoggi, who left Saudi Arabia for self-imposed exile in the United States a year ago.
On Thursday, one of the journalist’s sons, Salah Khashoggi, flew with his family from Saudi Arabia to the United States.