Erdogan is the wrong hero for Jamal Khashoggi

Relying on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to bring justice to the killers of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is, as the Turkish idiom goes, like “entrusting the liver to the cat.” We are relying on the wrong person on such a critical issue.

Erdogan may be putting on a good show in his speeches and writings demanding that those responsible stand trial in Turkey, but remember that we are talking about the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. Turkey, which labels journalists terrorists and traitors and literally ruins their lives, is not concerned with human rights.

I know, because they did that to me.

I once was the editor in chief of Today’s Zaman, a newspaper that was shuttered in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Even before that tragic and still mysterious day when so many innocent people lost their lives, the Turkish government had taken over Zaman in March 2016, some four months before July 15, and sent many of us who worked there into exile.

But my story is one of many in Turkish media. Since the coup attempt, the Erdogan government has shut down 189 media outlets and arrested 319 journalists, according to Turkey Purge, a website tracking Turkey’s authoritarian crackdown on dissent. The Committee to Protect Journalists calls Turkey the world’s worst jailer of journalists, with 73 behind bars at the end of 2017. Those outlets he hasn’t closed, he has coopted either through pressure into self-censorship, criminal prosecution or outright confiscation of ownership.

So we know Erdogan cares not a whit about independent journalism. Why does he take such an interest in this case of a foreign journalist killed on Turkish soil?

The Khashoggi case is part of his longstanding effort to become an influential broker in the region.  Just like the American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was a hostage in Turkey for two years while Turkey-United States relations were on the brink, the Khashoggi investigation is a bargaining chip, this time with Saudi Arabia. 

Turkey has dripped out details, though often contradictory, of Khashoggi’s murder in order to keep attention on its self-appointed role as judge and jury in lieu of a real trial that may never come. While Erdogan reiterates that he does not believe that ailing Saudi King Salman would issue such a death order, he maintains that the highest levels of the Saudi government were involved. As a budding autocrat, Erdogan knows that nobody would believe that Prince Mohammad bin Salman, de facto ruler of the country, was unaware of the plot against Khashoggi.

This is especially relevant for Turkey, which has pursued followers of Fethullah Gulen--accused without evidence by Erdogan of fomenting the coup attempt--to all ends of the earth. Saudi Arabia agreed to extradite Gulen movement followers upon Erdogan’s request few months ago, and follows the example from Kosovo to Malaysia of innocent people rendered back to Turkey where they face uncertain futures in prison.

We know Erdogan is incapable of holding a fair trial since he has both captured the judiciary and failed to adequately prosecute the coup attempt, choosing instead to demonize independent thinkers and broad categories of people. It may well be that a small group of Gulen sympathizers were among those disaffected military officers who launched the coup attempt, but at this point it looks like we will never know. Meanwhile, its followers still expect the Gulen movement leadership to reveal more amid allegations of a fractions within (as former Zaman correspondent Ahmet Donmez reported recently) that might be cooperating with the deep state in Turkey. The call for a much more transparent decision-making process within the ranks of the movement is also on the rise among its sympathizers. So is the disappointment for lack of sign of change within the inner circle of the movement that is unknown to many. 

Instead, the majority of Turkey lives in an alternative universe of reality and cannot even question the official narrative of that tragic night. They have had to stand by while hundreds of thousands of innocent countrymen and women have had their lives destroyed over lost jobs, lost housing, and public shaming.

Those purge victims deserve a fair hearing to turn their lives around. They will not find that in today’s Turkey, just as we should not rely on Khashoggi’s case to be adequately resolved.

Erdogan is not going to be the hero of the Khashoggi murder, just as he hasn’t been a true hero in Turkey since his slide into authoritarianism.