Mohammed bin Salman the elephant in the room of Erdogan speech

The ‘naked truth?’: Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Picture: AFP

One name was glaringly absent from the first speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey in which he addressed Jamal Khashoggi’s killing.

The journalist’s name was invoked repeatedly as the victim of a “savage murder”. King Salman, the Saudi head of state, was also named — respectfully — as the man to whom Erdogan appealed to “do what it takes” to round up not only Khashoggi’s killers but those who ordered it.

But the name of the king’s son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was not mentioned at all, despite his position as Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader. MBS, as he is popularly known, is in the view of the Turkish authorities the man most likely to have ordered the killing.

Under him, Saudi Arabia has leapt from placid oil giant to regional firestarter, projecting its military and strategic power in ways that have tipped into recklessness.

Khashoggi’s murder is merely the latest and most prominent of a string of missteps by the 33-year-old Crown Prince, from the abduction of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri last November to the ruinous war in Yemen.

Erdogan’s evasion, never mentioning the crown prince by name, is an attempt to reassert the king’s position over his son; one head of state speaking to another.

The Turkish President’s direct appeals to King Salman, whose credibility, he says, “is not in question”, seek to defuse any confrontation at state level while upping the pressure on him to deal with his troublesome son.

Erdogan had promised to reveal the “naked truth” in his speech. He didn’t. There was no confirmation of the existence of an audio recording of the killing, repeatedly leaked to Turkish media.

But in addition to confirming some details previously known only from such leaks, Erdogan disclosed pieces of tantalising new evidence.

His speech revealed for the first time the scale of the reconnaissance mission before Khashoggi’s death, with three staff from the Saudi consulate returning to Riyadh days before the murder for a planning meeting.

He said their comings and goings were captured on CCTV and that they had visited Belgrad forest — the site now being scoured by Turkish police searching for Khashoggi’s body — the day before the journalist returned to the consulate.

Such new titbits are designed to increase Riyadh’s nervousness over what else Ankara knows and could yet release.

The alleged audio recording remains Ankara’s nuclear option but there is plenty else, Erdogan appears to hint, that could yet emerge if Saudi Arabia fails to address the crime to Turkey’s satisfaction.

Erdogan stopped well short of a full reveal but left little doubt that more lies behind the curtain as he tossed the ball into the febrile Saudi court.

The Times