GEOPOLITICAL MYSTERY

The announcement made by Turkish authorities about the disappearance of the Saudi columnist for The Washington Post, Jamal Khashoggi, a US resident since 2017, has spawned a real geopolitical investigation. On October 2, the journalist entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never walked out.

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Riyadh acknowledged the death of the journalist only on October 20, despite the previous statement that Khashoggi disappeared after leaving the consulate. Later, the state-run Saudi media distributed a statement where the country's prosecutor general acknowledged the columnist’s death "from a spontaneous quarrel with the consulate staff." "The individuals who did this exceeded their authority. There obviously was a tremendous mistake made, and what compounded the mistake was the attempt to try to cover up," said Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to the American Fox News. Initial investigation by Saudi authorities has so far ended up with the detention of 18 people and the dismissal of Ahmad al-Asiri, deputy head of the General Intelligence Directorate, and Saud al-Qahtani, adviser to the royal court.

According to Reuters and ABC News citing a high-ranking source in the Saudi government, the murder of the journalist was not a planned action. Several individuals, who had deliberately arrived from Saudi Arabia, were supposed to persuade Khashoggi to return to the kingdom. He was threatened and later put in a chokehold, albeit overdosed, when he tried to resist. In an attempt to cover up the tragic outcome, Khashoggi's body was allegedly wrapped in a carpet, moved out of the consulate in a consular car, and handed over to a "local collaborator", a resident of Istanbul, to dispose of. Later, one of the men suspected in the death of the journalist was captured on surveillance cameras leaving the consulate in Khashoggi's clothes.

In fact, it was the poise of Turkey that compelled the Saudi authorities to acknowledge the fact of Khashoggi's death inside the consulate. According to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, "Saudis became more open to cooperation after a conversation between the Turkish President and the Saudi King. It’s important that they admitted the murder, albeit late and under pressure." The investigation initiated by the Turkish Ministry of Interior is under the personal control of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and includes the examination of the Saudi consulate building.

Turkish media refers to reports allegedly leaked by a group of officials claiming that Khashoggi’s wristwatch was on at the time of his murder sending audio and video signals to a cloud service. The journalist left his iPhones to his fiancée, a Turkish national Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting for him outside the consulate. She presumably knows the access codes to the cloud service. According to reports, the audio recording confirms that Khashoggi was mutilated just after his arrival to the consulate, injected a substance and dismembered while being alive. According to The Washington Post, Turkey has handed audio and video recordings confirming the torture and death of the journalist to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, although Çavuşoğlu and Pompeo denied this.

On October 23, speaking before the fellow members from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Recep T. Erdoğan said that Khashoggi’s murder was a well-planned, brutal and barbaric act calling for the trial of the suspects in Istanbul. The president underlined that he did not question the sincerity of the Saudi king, when he said that he had been unaware of the circumstances surrounding the Khashoggi case.

Controversial personality

Western media portrays Khashoggi as one of the boldest and most progressive thinkers of his country, an active reformist and the most consistent critic of the Saudi authorities. However, the late 59-year-old journalist had contradictory views and preferences. Below is just a few facts from his rich biography.

Khashoggi has been close to the Muslim Brotherhood in his younger years;a proximity he has maintained for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he has received a Western education while being a confidant within the Saudi royal family. In 1980s, he communicated with the Afghan Mujahedeen and befriended with Osama bin Laden. When the US Navy team killed the Terrorist No. 1 in 2011, Khashoggi mourned his old friend in his Twitter account: "You were beautiful and brave in those beautiful days in Afghanistan, before you surrendered to hatred and passion." In London, Khashoggi started an organisation called The Friends of Democracy in Algeria. Shortly before his death, he founded an advocacy group called Democracy in the Arab World Now, or DAWN. He once admired the Arab spring, but later criticised it harshly.

Khashoggi came from a noble family: his grandfather was the personal doctor to the first king of Saudi Arabia, his uncle was a well-known arms dealer, and his cousin Dodi al-Fayed was the lover of Princess Diana. He graduated from the Indiana State University in 1985 and worked for an English-language newspaper, which was a promising start of his journalist career after returning to Saudi Arabia. But it is difficult to admit him as an ordinary journalist due to his close ties to the royal family. Khashoggi was friends with Prince al-Walid ibn Talal (a billionaire Saudi investor later arrested by Crown Prince Mohammed) and worked as an adviser to Prince Turki ibn Faisal, the former head of the Saudi intelligence, who has later served as the ambassador to Britain and the US. The Western media used to quote Khashoggi often as an expert on Saudi Arabia and Islamic radicalism. Problems began when King Salman, who ascended to the throne in 2015, transferred enormous power to his son, Crown Prince Mohammed. Khashoggi was banned from posting even on Twitter, and subsequently moved to the US, where he soon launched a campaign against the crown prince. Shortly before his death, Khashoggi was going to marry and settle in Istanbul.

Risky game

Being an apparently criminal case, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi has nevertheless quickly turned into a geopolitical storm. Unfortunately, it is not because the world is outraged by the attack on freedom of expression and not because Khashoggi's murder was an extraordinary case involving a death of a journalist. In fact, dozens of reporters die in different countries every year, sometimes under circumstances much more tragic (in terms of freedom of expression) than this one, but none has provoked a public reaction as strong as the death of the Saudi columnist. Nor was Khashoggi a prominent journalist, whose death would have catalysed such a strong reaction. However, given his vague biographical details and ideals, he can well be considered an epitome of all the political and economic contradictions existing in the Middle East and in the third countries having national interests in this region. No matter how misanthropic it may sound but the aftermath of Khashoggi's death is more important than the actual cause of his death be it an accident, a flash of anger or a planned act of revenge.

First, the Khashoggi case has put the US in a tricky situation. Washington invests a lot in creating an image of an ardent defender of human rights, which is why Americans could not remain silent. On the other hand, spoiling relations with Riyadh, the US's key ally in the Middle East and major political and economic partner is not a good idea either. Remarkably, Donald Trump made his first presidential visit to Riyadh contrary to the long-standing tradition of his predecessors who would have made their first foreign visit to one of the neighbouring countries. Thus, it is not surprising that the incumbent host of the White House is reluctant to "walk away from Saudi Arabia" while trying to believe that the kingdom's explanation for Khashoggi's unintentional murder was credible. Incidentally, Khashoggi was actually banned from publishing his articles in the kingdom because of his criticism of Riyadh’s relationship with Trump.

The most interesting aspect of this story is that not everyone in Washington agrees with Trump. The Congress is bearing down on him demanding sanctions and the suspension of the arms deal. For example, the influential Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has declared himself personally offended by the incident.

Other Western countries reacted in a similar manner. Germany has stopped the export of weapons to the kingdom; Canada is threatening to annul the multi-billion dollar defence contract. Many managers of the largest transnational companies have cancelled their participation in the recent investment conference in Saudi Arabia, which is also known as Davos in the Desert, including the chair of the IMF, CEO of Uber, as well as the heads of Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse, the British subsidiary of HSBC, Société Générale, JP Morgan Chase. Several media groups, including the The New York Times, Bloomberg and CNN, withdrew their journalists from Saudi Arabia with the delegations from Australia, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand cancelled their trips to the kingdom. US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin also had to cancel his visit to the country.

Surely, these events reveal a deep rift within the political leadership of the United States. The $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia concluded in May 2017, the largest in the US history, is considered Trump's great achievement and is indeed beneficial for the US. But Trump's opponents do not mind shutting 500,000 jobs and are even ready to turn a blind eye on the void left by western leaders boycotting Saudi Arabia’s Davos in the Desert conference that Russia stepped into by sending more delegates to Riyadh, as The Times notes. In fact, we witness a risky game on the eve of the midterm elections in the US, a game with its own rules.

While many representatives of the political establishment in Washington do not like Trump, many Saudis seem to dislike the 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who has concentrated the entire power in his hands. Western media was quick to recall his orders to arrest the members of the royal family, as well as his influence on the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, sanctions against Qatar, and the military operation in Yemen.

The Crown Prince is not a favourite of some Americans either, who believe he had badly compromised himself and must transfer the power to another member of the royal family. According to Le Figaro, the CIA is likely one of the parties most discontent with MBS's actions, hence the hasty dispatch of the CIA Director Gina Haspel to Istanbul. The Agency "still cannot come to terms with an event that took place in summer 2017, when Muhammed bin Salman toppled his own cousin, Prince Mohammed Ibn Nayef, an iconic member of the royal family behind the anti-terrorist struggle in Saudi Arabia and a favourite of American intelligence services."

The geopolitical game following the assassination of Khashoggi is also remarkable in the context of the Saudi-Turkish rivalry primarily over Iran, where the Saudis line up with the US and Israel. Turkey, which is also an American ally, but is a member of NATO unlike Saudi Arabia, has its own views on Iran as far as the Palestinian problem, Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood go. Obviously, by challenging Saudi Arabia, President Erdoğan wants to strengthen his position. Nevertheless, he does not openly give names and respectfully speaks of King Salman, leaving room for manoeuvres and negotiations.

In the near future,Wwe will likely see some inevitable changes in the geopolitical balance of the Middle East, as well as the losses and situational trophies of the involved parties along the course of this "mystery case". But a death of any human being is certainly a sad event...