Don't know how much you've been following this story, but a prominent Saudi dissident and journalist living in self imposed exile went into the Saudi consulate in Ankara earlier this week to get papers to finalise his divorce (so he could marry his Turkish girlfriend). He never came out. Now the Turkish authorities claim that they have evidence that he was murdered there and his body removed and disposed of. (Previously the speculation was that the Saudis had smuggled him out of the country with Turkish state collusion). Erdoğan is making a statement today...
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Jamal Khashoggi
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Astonishing - and very disturbing story- especially after the wave of praise from the US - and UK- for the Mohammed bin Salman as a reformer
https://twitter.com/sarahleah1/status/1048712997697413120
what is the relationship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia?
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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Postwhat is the relationship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia?
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- Aug 2008
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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
Turkey and Erdoğan have strange relationship with their Kurdish minority. Erdoğan got a lot of the conservative Sunni Kurds to vote for him at the beginning and did a lot but it was all based on political Islam.
A large proportion of Turkey's Kurds are Alevi and therefore Shia. It's a different branch to the Alawite in Syria but is frequently confused for them by the media.
I'm sure both countries meddle in the internal politics of one another, Turkey and Iran I mean, but not to an obvious degree as both have very similar interests at the end of the day.
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This is, of course, rotten. However, it does throw up an interesting conundrum for the US and UK. It's all very well having a pop at Russia but, when two of your buffer states are involved in this, it isn't quite so easy to condemn.
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https://twitter.com/arbortender/status/1050584638509350913?s=21
Lots of spin around
The BBC‘ correspondent Frank Gardner -famously close to the security services has been suggesting it was“ an abduction that went wrong“. Foreign secretary Jeremy has talked about the shared values Britain has with Saudi Arabia. (He recently compared the European Union to the USSR
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Would it be an appropriate analogy to note that the US has used drones to kill its own citizens abroad?
I think the shock in this case is partly the brazen openness of how it was done rather than just the threshold of murder that was crossed. Trump has changed the norms but mainly in the fact that evil no longer has to be concealed, disguised or apologized for.
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I wonder what the implications are going to be for a country that is the fourth biggest spender on the military in the world, one of the major suppliers of oil, and a massive investor in all the countries that are supposed to be outraged by this. I'm sure the ramifications from this will be massive.
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