Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan commanded a global audience from Ankara today, addressing for the first time in detail the circumstances surrounding the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. But the Turkish leader stopped short of accusing any of the kingdom’s leaders by name.
Erdogan, who had riveted the world with pledges to reveal the truth “in all its nakedness” today, asserted that Khashoggi had been killed in a “savage” premeditated murder. “We have strong evidence in our hands that shows the murder wasn’t accidental but was instead the outcome of a planned operation,” Erdogan told members of his ruling Justice and Development Party in a parliamentary address that was broadcast live and translated simultaneously into Arabic and English.
