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Turkey’s President Says Recording of Khashoggi’s Killing Given to U.S. Turkey’s President Says Recording of Khashoggi’s Killing Was Given to U.S.
(about 1 hour later)
Turkey said Saturday that it had provided the United States and other countries with an audio recording of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-born dissident and American resident who died in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. WASHINGTON — Turkey said on Saturday that it had turned over audio recordings of the brutal killing of a Saudi journalist to the United States and other Western countries, intensifying the pressure on President Trump to take stronger punitive steps against his allies in Saudi Arabia.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said his government had turned over copies of the recording to the United States as well as France, Britain, Germany and Saudi Arabia. He was speaking to reporters before flying to Paris for an international gathering to commemorate the end of World War I. The disclosure, made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was his first public acknowledgment of the existence of recordings of the murder of the journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last month. Saudi Arabia has acknowledged that its operatives killed Mr. Khashoggi but denied that the attack was ordered at the top levels of the royal court.
Turkey made the recording available “to all of them, so they’ve also listened to the conversations, they know it,” Mr. Erdogan said. “There is no need to distort this.” It is unclear when or how the Turks shared the audio recording with the other governments. “We gave them the tapes,” Mr. Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara before flying to Paris to join Mr. Trump and other leaders at an international gathering. “They’ve also listened to the conversations, they know it. There is no need to distort this.”
It was the first time Mr. Erdogan has publicly acknowledged the existence of the audio recordings of the killing, presumably obtained through surveillance by Turkish intelligence agencies. The official confirmation will increase the pressure on President Trump and other Western leaders to demand accountability for the killing, specifically from Saudi Arabia. The White House declined to say whether it had a copy of the recording. But if true, Mr. Erdogan’s claim puts Mr. Trump in a deeply awkward position, suggesting he possesses direct evidence of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, even as he has resisted tough sanctions against the Saudis and declined to say exactly who he believes was responsible for the crime.
Mr. Khashoggi, who lived in Virginia and wrote columns for The Washington Post, was killed when he went to the consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to pick up a paper necessary to facilitate his wedding. After initially denying any involvement, the Saudi government has acknowledged that he was killed in a premeditated operation and detained 18 people as suspects. But the Saudis have not said who ordered the killing. The Trump administration has taken modest steps against the Saudi government, suspending air-refueling flights for the Saudi military campaign in Yemen and preparing human rights sanctions against Saudis who have been linked to the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia who wrote columns for The Washington Post.
Turkey has said Saudi Arabia sent a 15-member team to kill Mr. Khashoggi and dispose of his body. Mr. Khashoggi was said to be dismembered and his remains have yet to be found. But the White House has declined to finger Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has developed close ties to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and has become a linchpin of the administration’s Middle East strategy. Analysts have said that any operation like the one that led to Mr. Khashoggi’s assassination almost certainly would have to be approved at the highest levels in Saudi Arabia.
Turkish and Western officials have previously discussed the existence of the audio recordings only on the condition of anonymity. Turkish officials have said that the audio includes clear evidence of a premeditated killing in which a team of Saudi agents moved quickly to dismember Mr. Khashoggi’s body with a bone saw in order to dispose of his remains. The administration’s limited actions against the Saudis seem calculated in part to head off a tougher response in Congress, where lawmakers from both parties have expressed outrage over the murder of a journalist inside a diplomatic facility and Saudi Arabia’s shifting explanations for it.
Gina Haspel, the director of the C.I.A., flew to the Turkish capital, Ankara, last month to meet with her Turkish counterparts. Both Turkish and American officials said she was allowed to hear, but not take with her, the audio recording. While Mr. Trump said he believes that the Saudis tried to cover up the killing, he has steadfastly reserved judgment on who is to blame until the Saudi government provides a definitive public accounting of the killing, based on its own investigation. That is expected this coming week.
Western intelligence agencies, many current and former officials, and most experts on Saudi Arabia have concluded that the operation to kill Mr. Khashoggi could only have been carried out with the order of the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “I’ll have a much stronger opinion on that subject over the next week,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference on Tuesday. He referred to the killing as a “very sad thing, very terrible thing.”
But President Trump has so far stood by the crown prince, who the White House has embraced as its most critical Arab ally in various strategies to roll back Iranian influence or press the Palestinians to reach a peace agreement with Israel. “We’re working with Congress, we’re working with Turkey, and we’re working with Saudi Arabia,” the president said. “And I’m forming a very strong opinion.”
American officials said on Friday that the Trump administration is ending air refueling flights for the Saudi military campaign in Yemen and preparing sanctions against Saudis linked to the killing. Mr. Trump has vowed “severe” consequences, but resisted canceling arms sales despite bipartisan pressure from Congress. Mr. Trump was likely to meet with Mr. Erdogan in Paris, where dozens of world leaders gathered at the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
Turkish and Western officials have previously discussed the existence of the audio recordings only on the condition of anonymity. Turkish officials have said the audio includes clear evidence of a premeditated killing, in which a team of Saudi agents moved quickly and matter-of-factly to dismember Mr. Khashoggi’s body with a bone saw.
The director of the C.I.A., Gina Haspel, met with Turkish intelligence officials in Ankara last month, and Turkish and American officials said she was allowed to listen to the recordings, but not take a copy with her.
It is unclear when or how the Turks shared the recording with the other governments. It is also unclear whether Mr. Erdogan views the sharing of the audio with Ms. Haspel as amounting to handing it over to the United States.
While the timing of the Turkish disclosures is uncertain, Turkey’s motivation for doing so is not. In the weeks since the killing, Mr. Erdogan has abandoned his initially cautious effort to avoid a full rupture in Turkish relations with Riyadh, and he has instead entered into an all-out campaign to damage or even dislodge Prince Mohammed from power.
Turkish officials have said Washington is the primary focus of his effort, in part because Mr. Erdogan believes that only the United States has enough influence in Saudi Arabia and the region to punish Prince Mohammed.
On Saturday, Mr. Erdogan accused the Saudis of dragging their feet in the investigation. “Saudi Arabia must respond to our good will, and be just, and clear themselves of this stain,” he said.
Hostility between Mr. Erdogan and Prince Mohammed has been an open secret in the Middle East for years. Mr. Erdogan has presented himself as a champion of the Arab Spring uprisings and the Islamist political parties that once appeared poised to ride them to power; Prince Mohammed is the anchor of an alliance of Arab authoritarians who have sought to stamp out those uprisings and ensure against any recurrence.
Each considers himself the international standard-bearer for a radically contradictory view of Islam. Mr. Erdogan was also a personal friend of Mr. Khashoggi’s from the journalist’s years as a commentator on regional affairs in the Saudi-owned media.
Still, for weeks after the killing, Mr. Erdogan was circumspect about his accusations, mainly limiting himself to provocative questions. Turkish officials close to him said that Mr. Erdogan hoped to avoid a rift with Riyadh, noting that the two rival leaders had kept up the appearance of cordial relations for years because of their shared interests in the region.
Mr. Erdogan was also reluctant to acknowledge possession of audio recordings because they appear to have been obtained through intelligence surveillance inside the Saudi diplomatic compound — something that is routine but also a violation of international diplomatic covenants.
But as Saudi Arabia has bungled its response to the killing — denying it for weeks, then calling it an accident, and later acknowledging evidence of premeditation — Mr. Erdogan’s posture has shifted.
As criticism has mounted, he has evidently calculated that he can deal a serious enough blow to Prince Mohammed to permanently cripple him. When other news in the West threatened to push Mr. Khashoggi from the headlines, Turkish allies of Mr. Erdogan have reached out to Western journalists, probing for ways to keep it alive.
In Washington, where the midterm elections have eclipsed news of the case for the last two weeks, the Trump administration is expected to announce economic sanctions against Saudi officials linked to the murder, according to current and former officials.
At the White House, as well as the State Department and the Treasury Department, officials have discussed imposing the sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, which gives the executive branch the power to punish foreign officials involved in human rights abuses. The announcement could come in days.
The administration has also shown growing impatience with Saudi Arabia’s handling of the war in Yemen. Last week, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on all sides to end hostilities and take part in United Nations-led negotiations. But Saudi leaders did not immediately move to limit their airstrikes, angering some in the Trump administration, according to former officials.
“The Saudis have escalated; they have intensified the war,” said Bruce Riedel, an expert on Saudi Arabia at the Brookings Institution. “It is a very public rebuke of both the secretary of state and the secretary of defense by the Saudis. The administration has not said anything about that. But curtailing air refueling would be their response.”
The American support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen has been deeply controversial, especially as civilian casualties have mounted — many children are among the victims — and a famine resulting from the war has gripped the country.
The administration has faced growing bipartisan criticism over the American military’s support for the Saudi campaign. On Friday, Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, called for an end to the air- refueling mission.