Over the past three weeks, Turkey has beaten the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at every turn. It is no secret there is no love lost between the two countries, but Turkey could never hope to take on the KSA, the regional power, without international support. According to Alex Ward of Vox, the alleged murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is exactly what Turkey was looking for.
Let us not beat around the bush, I think the Saudis murdered Khashoggi due to his critiques of the Saudi royal family and his relatively progressive desires for the country. I believe if the order to kill Khashoggi did not come directly from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, then he definitely knew about it. The Saudis are as guilty as it gets, and they are handling the situation horribly.
I honestly believe they just did not think there would be this type of international pushback for murdering a journalist. I mean, to be fair, Russia has made the political opposition disappear for years without consequences. But we are not going to focus on how poorly the KSA has handled this situation, but rather how well Turkey has.
First off, no one knows exactly what information Turkey has. Khashoggi was a green-card holding resident of the U.S., so we have a vested interest in seeing this case resolved, but we still do not know all the facts yet. Turkey is keeping a tight rein on their intel. According to one Turkish official interviewed by David Gauthier-Villars and Summer Said of The Wall Street Journal, they have “turned on the drip-drip.” Each time the Saudis release a new statement, the Turkish government has them cornered.
Since Turkey has kept their information so tightly controlled, the KSA cannot hope to outmaneuver them. Additionally, Villars and Said explained it is clear Turkey has some sort of hard evidence of the killing, whether it is an audio or video recording.
Each time the government of the KSA changes their story, whether they actually knew about the killing or not, they continue to dig themselves into a hole. Every time they have changed their story so far (I think a total of 4 times now), Turkey releases a new piece of information directly countering their claims.
The Saudis are continually shooting themselves in the foot by not getting out ahead of the story. Everyone knows the royal family’s track record with human rights abuses (even though the KSA is ironically also the head of a UN commission on human rights), as one of the few countries who still crucifies people, but they are generally protected from sanctions by their strong relationship with the U.S. By not owning up to the murder, at least in some official government capacity, they allow Turkey to continually damage their international reputation.
Truly, the KSA’s best bet for controlling this situation would have been to go with the “rogue killing” story first. Because Khashoggi was a Saudi citizen, and killed within the confines of a Saudi consulate, the KSA is answerable to no one but themselves. If other countries wanted to intervene, the worst thing which could happen would be the imposition of sanctions, or maybe an international denunciation from the UN.
Really, as long as the KSA firmly placed the blame on someone else within the government (implying Salman was ignorant of the hit), they would have gotten away with it. Instead, the Saudi’s handed Erdogan a proverbial silver bullet. Over the next couple of weeks, I predict we will finally get the truth one way or another, whether the KSA owns up to it or not.