That World's News

Recep Tayyip Erdogan greets supporters at a ceremony in Istanbul on Sunday

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan stepped up the pressure on Saudi Arabia over the death of Jamal Khashoggi on Sunday, casting doubts on Riyadh’s claims that the journalist died in a fist fight and saying he would reveal what happened in “full detail”. Saudi Arabia finally admitted at the weekend that Khashoggi was killed in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul this month after two weeks of denials. It said it had detained 18 unidentified Saudis over the incident. But Riyadh has changed its story several times and its claims that the 60-year-old columnist was killed in a fight have been widely condemned as lacking credibility. Turkish officials have previously said they believe Khashoggi was killed by a 15-man Saudi hit team that flew into Istanbul and later dismembered his body. Mr Erdogan, who has been restrained in his comments over the past two weeks, referred to that version of events in a speech yesterday. “Why did 15 people come here; why were 18 people detained?” All of this must be explained in full detail,” he said. “On Tuesday, these things will be explained in a very different way at the group meeting [of Turkey’s ruling party]. There I will go into these details.” A Turkish official told the Financial Times that Ankara had successfully “shamed” Riyadh into an admission of guilt. “Now we have to get the full story. We will refute the claim that a fist fight caused this mess.” If Mr Erdogan reveals the details of Khashoggi’s death on Tuesday, it would coincide with the opening of Saudi Arabia’s flagship investor conference in Riyadh. A growing list of western government ministers and executives have withdrawn from the gathering because of the crisis.

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Western leaders have also demanded that Riyadh provide more details on the death of Khashoggi, one of the Middle East’s most prominent journalists who was living in self-exile in the US. Riyadh, grappling with its biggest diplomatic crisis since the September 11 attacks on the US in 2001, has provided no evidence to back its claims and it is still not clear where Khashoggi’s body is. Faced with a growing backlash in the US, Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, appeared on Fox News to defend his government’s actions. He called Khashoggi’s murder an “aberration” and a “criminal act” that was the result of a “rogue operation” by individuals who exceeded their powers and then tried to cover it up. He said Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince, had no knowledge of the assassination, which was now being investigated. Asked if he knew the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s remains, he said: “We are working on this with our Turkish colleagues, the public prosecutor is continuing his line of questioning. We are intent on determining what happened, we are intent on uncovering all of the facts that exist in this case, we want to make sure we know what happened.” In a joint statement on Sunday, the foreign ministers of the UK, France and Germany “stressed that more efforts are needed and expected towards establishing the truth in a comprehensive, transparent and credible manner”. The statement added that “nothing can justify this killing and we condemn it in the strongest possible terms”. “We will ultimately make our judgment based on the credibility of the further explanation we receive about what happened and our confidence that such a shameful event cannot and will not ever be repeated,” the statement said. After initially hinting that he would accept Saudi Arabia’s claim, US President Donald Trump on Saturday said he was “not satisfied” with its explanation for the death of the journalist, who wrote a column for the Washington Post. “I am not satisfied until we find the answer,” Mr Trump told reporters, adding he was considering imposing sanctions on Riyadh, the main Arab ally of the US. Political pressure in the US is mounting on Mr Trump to take a tougher line, with lawmakers of both parties pinning the blame for Khashoggi’s murder on the highest echelons of the monarchy.

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“In Saudi Arabia, you do not do something of this magnitude without having clearance from the top. We need to find out who that is and hold him accountable,” Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, said on NBC on Sunday. “If the facts lead to what we all suspect they will, I think it will be very problematic for our relationship, going forward.” Peter King, a senior Republican in the House of Representatives, added: “I would ask the president to try to thread the needle here . . . whether it involves imposing sanctions, whether it involves delaying arms sales, making a clear statement of condemnation at the end but still not hurt ourselves.” Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, said the crown prince had his “fingerprints all over this” and called on the Trump administration to expel the Saudi ambassador to the US until a “third-party investigation” on the murder was completed. “We should call on our allies to do the same. Unless the Saudi kingdom understands that civilised countries around the world are going to reject this conduct and make sure that they pay a price for it, they’ll continue doing it,” Mr Durbin said. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the US should suspend military sales and “certain security assistance” to Saudi Arabia, as well as impose sanctions on the perpetrators of the murder. “This really ought to be something that causes us to do a re-examination of our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” Mr Schiff told ABC news. In a sign that Prince Mohammed will not bear any responsibility for the crisis, his father, King Salman, named the 33-year-old crown prince to head a committee to restructure the intelligence services within 30 days. Turkey and Saudi Arabia already have strained relations and vie for influence in the Middle East. Riyadh was annoyed by Ankara’s support for Qatar after Saudi Arabia and its allies imposed a regional embargo on the Gulf state. It also considers Turkey as sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement that the kingdom describes as a terrorist group.