Turkey and Saudi Arabia: Irony on the Bosphorus

Apologies for my absence. I have been working on a number of projects simultaneously and didn’t have much free time to write. This is just a brief post, but there will be plenty more to come in the days and weeks ahead. 

I recently wrote an op-ed that featured in Haaretzabout the case of the missing Saudi journalist and recent critic of the Saudi regime Jamal Khashoggi. Turkish police have been granted access to the Saudi consulate where he went missing, but Turkish investigators believe he was killed on the premises. In this piece, I highlight that two of the world's biggest suppressors of freedom of expression are about to go head to head over Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance, while the West, keen to keep Riyadh's billions onside, will only muster a silent displeasure, a whisper in a thunderstorm: 
 
Turkey, Jailer of Journalists, Now Slams Saudi Arabia - for Murdering a Journalist 
 
Saudi dissidents don't just vanish into thin air. If anything, they are deliberately disappeared, as was the case with journalist and prominent media commentator Jamal Khashoggi several days ago. He entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to sign papers relating to his forthcoming marriage but has not been seen since. 
 
Turkish investigators are looking into the possibility that Khashoggi was tortured, murdered and chopped into pieces while still in the consular building.
 
Shocking? Certainly. Reckless? Absolutely. But the Saudi kingdom figured it could get away with it. 
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