Erdogan’s visit seen as moving on from slaying of Khashoggi

The killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul sent an already tense and shaky relationship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia into complete free fall.

Fast-forward 31⁄2 years later and it appears Turkey and Saudi Arabia are attempting to build a bridge and move on.

In his first trip to Saudi Arabia in five years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan embraced Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and sipped traditional Arabic coffee with King Salman before a state dinner and direct talks that ran into the early hours yesterday.

What’s behind Turkey’s diplomatic pivot?

crunch amid the war in Ukraine.

The timing for reconciliation also makes more sense now. Saudi Arabia ended a years-long embargo on Qatar over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist opposition groups. Although relations have been restored between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they had yet to be fixed with Qatar’s steadfast ally – Turkey– until now.

Possibly, the strongest impetus for reconciliation is that the crown prince wants to put a definitive end to the scandal of Khashoggi’s killing that has loomed over him and cast a pall on his reputation.

Big name Western investors and politicians stayed away from Riyadh in the aftermath of the killing, though some have since returned to do business again in the kingdom.

Khashoggi had been writing columns in The Washington Post hailing the crown prince’s social reforms while expressing concern over far-reaching arrests of perceived critics. The billionaire owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos, subsequently commissioned an investigation that concluded his phone was hacked after receiving a message from the crown prince, though many questions remain unanswered.

How was Turkey pressuring the crown prince?

Turkish authorities fanned the global outrage and suspicion directed at Prince Mohammed. Turkey shared audio of the gruesome slaying with Western intelligence agencies, a signal the Saudi consulate where he was killed had been bugged. US intelligence subsequently concluded the operation could not have happened without the prince’s go-ahead. Prince Mohammed has denied any involvement.

While never naming Prince Mohammed, Erdogan said the operation that killed Khashoggi was ordered by the ‘‘highest levels’’ of the Saudi government. Khashoggi had entered the consulate in October 2018 to obtain papers to allow him to wed his Turkish fiancee. He never emerged and his body was never found.

Turkey had a case open against 26 Saudi suspects in absentia, but three weeks to the day before Erdogan was set to land in Saudi Arabia, the Turkish prosecutor pulled the plug on the case by transferring it to the kingdom, which had already held its own widely-criticised trial. No officials overseeing the operation were ever convicted. – AP