GLOBAL CENTRE STAGE
THE CHANGING DYNAMICS
OF THE MIDDLE EAST
IN LIGHT OF JAMAL KHASHOGGI MURDER
BY AASHNA JOHN*
Brief Background
“I have been told that I need to accept, with gratitude,
the social reforms that I have long called for while keeping
silent on other matters, ranging from the Yemen quagmire,
the hastily executed economic reforms, the blockade of Qatar,
discussions about an alliance with Israel to counter Iran,
and last year’s imprisonment of dozens of Saudi intellectuals
and clerics.” Jamal Khashoggi wrote this in the Washington
Post in May’; in retrospect now appearing as a premonition
for how things may go wrong if he continued to be a vocal
critic of the monarchy. His alleged state sponsored murder,
inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has sparked worldwide
outrage and has cast a long shadow over the Kingdom’s
global image - especially in light of its “reformist” Crown
Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. This grisly crime holds the
power to upend the status quo of the Middle East order and
have signifi cant implications for key players - Turkey, Iran
and the United States.
Erdogan’s Motivation
It has been clear from the off set that this “great crisis” is
not just about the death of a journalist but a battle for political
leadership of the Islamic world. Almost everything that we
know about the Khashoggi disappearance was revealed by
state owned or pro-government media tamed by Turkey’s
President Erdogan. His weekly parliamentary address, in
which he spoke about the murder, gathered unprecedented
global attention with its English broadcast breaking rating
records.
Erdogan opened his speech with condolences to not just
the family and friends of the Saudi journalist, but to the
‘media world’ as well. This is ironic coming from the leader
of a government that has imprisoned more journalists than
any other place in the world. Turkey is no beacon of liberal
democracy in the region and neither is Erdogan a champion
of free speech. He has executed his own press crackdown in
a less gruesome but no less enthusiastic fashion than Saudi
Arabia. Almost all critical news outlets have been seized
by the government or bullied into silence since the 2016
coup attempt. In defending Khashoggi, Erdogan intends on
increasing political leverage in the region and extracting an
important price from the Saudis.
The Saudis and its Sunni allies had no love for Turkey
or the “neo-Ottoman” ambitions of Erdogan. However, they
hoped that a resurgent Sunni Turkey could help strengthen the
8 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 10 • Oct-Nov 2018, Noida