It did not go to plan. The US secretary of state’s two-day trip has seemingly led Saudi Arabia and Turkey to dig further into positions that are starting to seem irreconcilable. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has not taken Washington’s bait – a push to blame elements of the Saudi state for Khashoggi’s death, but not the royal court itself. Instead, he has reiterated denials of any state connection to Khashoggi’s death inside the consulate. [...]
Erdoğan, a master tactician, is showing himself as a competent strategist. Using this crisis to diminish Saudi Arabia while cementing Turkey as a rising power in the Islamic world appears to be a consideration that eclipses the lucre offered by Saudi officials to make this all go away.
The steady leaks have been extremely difficult for Bin Salman to combat, and all the more so on Wednesday with a startling partial transcript that claimed the kingdom’s lead forensic scientist had told other assassins to listen to music as they dismembered Khashoggi on a table inside the consulate after slicing off his fingers. [...]
He is in so deep that even a partial confession at this stage would represent a humiliation that could eat into his domestic base, which has mostly accepted the state line that Khashoggi’s disappearance was a conspiratorial collaboration of Qatar and Turkey - two countries aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the current Saudi regime views as one of its two mortal foes.
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