In preparation for months, the visit to Saudi Arabia by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Thursday April 28 and Friday April 29, aims to pick up the pieces of the damaged relationship between the two rival Sunni powers, since the assassination of the journalist and Saudi opponent Jamal Khashoggi at the premises of the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Invited by 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 had cooled considerably in recent years. years because of the Khashoggi affair.
Criticism of the prince, especially in the columns of washington post, Jamal Khashoggi was last seen entering the premises of his country’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, to carry out an administrative procedure. He never came out and his body was never found.
According to several foreign secret services, including the Turkish services, which apparently had a listening system at the Saudi consulate, he was killed and then dismembered inside the consulate by a team of fifteen people who came especially from the kingdom for this purpose.
At the time, the Turkish press had multiplied the sordid revelations, from the description of the bone saw having been used to dismember the body of the journalist until its possible dissolution with acid in the bathtub of the consul. Mr. Erdogan had made this “political assassination” his battle horse, repeating over and over again that the order to kill the journalist had come “from the highest levels of the Saudi government”.
Transfer 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 being presented as the main sponsor of the murder, in Ankara as in Washington.
Four years later, Turkey is burning to bury the hatchet. Speaking to the media ahead of his departure for the coastal city of Jeddah on Thursday evening, President Erdogan had the most conciliatory words towards the kingdom, citing the end of the holy month of Ramadan as the most appropriate time for his visit. This is supposed to “rebuilding and strengthening fraternal bonds”. “Through our joint efforts, I believe we will take our relationship beyond what it was in the past”did he declare.
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, then in February, the visit had to be postponed, officially for calendar reasons, in reality to respond to the requests of the kingdom.
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