Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi King Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, April 28, 2022. SPA/AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s month-long visit to Saudi Arabia on Thursday April 28 and Friday April 29 aims to pick up the fragments of the damaged relationship between the two rival Sunni powers since the Saudi journalist’s assassination Opponent Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the premises of the Kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.
At the invitation of King Salman, with whom he shared the iftar meal (breaking the fast) on Thursday evening, Mr Erdogan immediately met Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman, with whom relations with him had cooled considerably in recent years because of the Khashoggi affair.
Critics of the prince, particularly in the Washington Post columns, Jamal Khashoggi was last seen entering the premises of his country’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018 to conduct an administrative hearing there. He never came out and his body was never found.
According to several foreign intelligence services, including the Turkish services, which appeared to have a wiretapping system at the Saudi consulate, he was killed and then dismembered at the consulate by a team of fifteen people who had traveled from the kingdom specifically for the purpose.
At the time, the Turkish press had multiplied the sordid revelations, from describing the bone saw used to dismember the journalist’s body to its possible dissolution with acid in the consul’s bathtub. Mr. Erdogan had made this “political assassination” his hobby and kept repeating that the order to kill the journalist came “from the highest levels of the Saudi government”.
Transmission of the Khashoggi file to the Saudi courts
These revelations had plunged the Saudi monarchy into one of the worst diplomatic crises in its history, with Crown Prince Bin Salman presented as the main sponsor of the assassination in both Ankara and Washington.
Four years later, Turkey is itching to bury the hatchet. Before leaving for the coastal city of Jeddah on Thursday evening, President Erdogan spoke to the media in the most forgiving terms towards the kingdom, citing the end of the holy month of Ramadan as the most appropriate time for his visit. This is intended to “restore and strengthen brotherly bonds”. “I believe that through our combined efforts, we will take our relationship beyond what it has been in the past,” he said.
Also Read: Turkey Sends Jamal Khashoggi Case to Saudi Arabia
His stay in Saudi Arabia, the first in five years, marks the culmination of several months of diplomatic work. Announced several times by the Turkish side, in January and then in February, the visit had to be officially postponed for scheduling reasons, in reality to meet the Kingdom’s requests.
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