The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has paid a visit to Turkey — for the first time since 2018, after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at its consulate in Istanbul.
This was reported by the BBC.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will hold face-to-face talks with Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. Last week, Erdogan said his talks in Ankara with Prince Mohammed would focus on advancing relations between the states to a "much higher level". A senior Turkish official told Reuters that the visit was expected to lead to "full normalization and resumption of the pre-crisis period", and the two leaders would sign agreements on energy, economy, and security.
Meanwhile, Prince Mohammed wants to end his international isolation. He also visited Jordan and Egypt this week as part of a tour of the Middle East, and next month he will meet with US President Joe Biden, who in 2019 promised to make Saudi Arabia an "outcast" in connection with Khashoggiʼs assassination.
Although Erdogan did not blame Prince Muhammad directly, he said he knew that the order to kill Khashoggi "came from the highest levels of the Saudi government." US intelligence has concluded that the Crown Prince authorized the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. The prosecutorʼs office of Saudi Arabia accused the "fraudulent" agents and said that the prince knew nothing about the operation.
- Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist, columnist, and writer from Saudi Arabia. He became famous as a critic of the Saudi government, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and criticized the persecution of activists, as well as the countryʼs foreign policy towards Yemen, Qatar, and Canada. In September 2017, Khashoggi left for the United States, where he led a column in the Washington Post. In it, he increasingly spoke out against Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman.
- Jamal Khashoggi disappeared on October 2, 2018, after visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Turkish security services said the journalist was strangled as soon as he entered the building, after which his body was dismembered and destroyed. According to the CIA, the order to assassinate Khashoggi was given by the Prince of Saudi Arabia Muhammad bin Salman Al Saud. In 2019, the Saudi prosecutorʼs office announced that 5 people had been sentenced to death for killing Khashoggi. These sentences were later commuted to 20 years in prison.